标签：#microsoft

After the recent Xbox outage even blocked people from playing offline disc-based console games, Microsoft is trying to soothe concerns that you don't truly own anything under Xbox's license system. In a statement to The Verge, Xbox technology chief Scott Van Vliet says that while physical game discs are subject to licensing inspections, that shouldn't […]

I recently passed the Microsoft AB-100 exam as part of the Microsoft Frontier Transformation Engineer journey. 🎉 After previously taking AI-103 , I found AB-100 to be a very different type of exam. While AI-103 is closer to the implementation and development side of building AI solutions, AB-100 is strongly focused on: Solution architecture Business requirements Technology selection Microsoft Copilot Studio Dynamics 365 Choosing the right Microsoft technology for each scenario Here are my main takeaways. AB-100 Is an Architecture-Oriented Exam The most important thing to understand is that AB-100 is not a coding exam . I did not encounter any code-oriented questions. Instead, the exam focuses on your ability to analyse a business scenario and determine how a solution should be designed. The questions are closer to: Which Microsoft technology should the organisation use? When should a company choose one platform instead of another? How should different services and products be combined? Which solution best satisfies the business and technical requirements? What are the architectural consequences of each decision? Memorising individual product features is not enough. You need to understand how the different Microsoft technologies fit together, where they overlap, and why one option is more appropriate than another under specific circumstances. Dynamics 365 Knowledge Is Important A good understanding of Dynamics 365 is important for this exam. You do not necessarily need to be a specialist in every Dynamics 365 product, but you should understand the role of the platform within a broader business solution. You should be comfortable identifying situations where Dynamics 365 is a better choice than: Building a custom application Using only Power Apps Using standalone Azure services Creating a solution entirely from scratch The exam expects you to reason about complete organisational solutions, not just isolated AI capabilities. You Need to Understand Microsoft Copilot Stu

Perplexity has expanded its agentic Personal Computer tool to Windows, allowing computers running the world's most popular OS to be used as a locally run AI system. Like the Mac version that Perplexity launched in April, Personal Computer for Windows operates like a "general-purpose digital worker" that can access local files and apps to perform […]

Microsoft says tools cost less than competing ones and outperform them, too.

Companies without their own models — or without a layer of AI infrastructure known as AI gateways to separate their prompts from the model itself — will be in trouble, Nadella says.

Microsoft bolstered its AI cybersecurity offerings this week with the launch of its first AI security model and a new security platform.

Framework laptops always come with compromises in exchange for their unique DIY premise. Even though you pay extra for one compared to sleeker options from competitors, it's easier to excuse minor flaws for modular ports, easy repairs, and an impressive range of upgradeable parts. So what happens when Framework goes "Pro"? We get a one-of-a-kind […]

By Suvankar Chakraborty | Principal Engineer — IAM, Modern Workplace Management & IT Operations The Collaboration Platform That Became a Governance Nightmare Microsoft Teams was deployed at extraordinary speed across the enterprise world. In most organisations I know, the deployment timeline went something like this: March 2020, global pandemic, remote work mandate, Teams switched on, everyone told to use it, governance deferred because there was no time. Five years later, the governance that was deferred in 2020 has still not been implemented in most of those environments. The result is predictable and consistent across industries: Teams sprawl at industrial scale. Hundreds of Teams that nobody owns. Channels for projects that ended three years ago. Guest users from partnerships that dissolved. Sensitive conversations in channels that include contractors who should not have visibility. Files shared in Teams chat — bypassing SharePoint governance entirely — on devices with no management policy. Meeting recordings stored in OneDrive folders that anyone with a link can access. Bot integrations that have permissions to read your Teams messages and access your calendar, approved by a user who clicked through an OAuth consent screen without reading it. In 13+ years of enterprise IAM and IT operations work, Teams governance has become one of the most consistently mismanaged areas of Microsoft 365. Not because it is technically difficult — the controls Microsoft provides are comprehensive. But because Teams sits at the intersection of IT, security, compliance, and the organisational culture of collaboration, and that intersection is where governance programmes go to die. This article is about why enterprises get Teams governance wrong, and what getting it right actually looks like — in specific, actionable, implementable terms. Why Teams Is a Governance Problem Unlike Any Other M365 Workload To understand the governance challenge, you need to understand what Microsoft Team

Let's get the joke out of the way, because you're going to hear it within four minutes of telling anyone you're learning C#: "Oh, C#? Isn't that just Microsoft Java?" Yes. Kind of. A little. Here's the actual story. Back around 2000, Microsoft wanted a modern, garbage-collected, object-oriented language for their shiny new .NET platform. Java existed and was extremely popular. Microsoft had previously shipped their own version of Java, Sun sued them into the sea, and the whole thing ended in tears and lawyers. So Microsoft did the very sensible, very corporate thing: they hired Anders Hejlsberg , the man who built Turbo Pascal and Delphi, and said: "make us a Java, but ours, and don't get us sued." He did. And then he kept improving it for twenty-five years while Java spent a decade arguing about whether it should add lambdas. So calling C# "Microsoft Java" today is like calling a smartphone "a Microsoft telegraph." Technically, you can trace the lineage. It is also extremely funny to the person being insulted, which is the only thing that matters. So, what can you actually do with this thing? More than you'd think. Let's take the tour. First, the obligatory Hello World Every language tour is legally required to start here. C#'s has changed a lot, which tells you something about the language's whole vibe. The old way, circa 2005, was a ceremony: using System ; namespace MyFirstApp { class Program { static void Main ( string [] args ) { Console . WriteLine ( "Hello, world!" ); } } } Eleven lines to say hello. You needed a namespace , a class , a Main method with a specific signature, and the kind of static void incantation that makes beginners quietly close the tab and go learn Python instead. The modern way (C# 9 and later) is this: Console . WriteLine ( "Hello, world!" ); That's the whole program. The compiler quietly puts all the ceremony back for you behind the scenes. This is C# in a nutshell: it grew up in a buttoned-up enterprise suit, and over twenty years it

AI companies including Nvidia and Mistral urge policymakers to avoid broad restrictions on open-weight AI models as Washington debates responses to Chinese AI and alleged model distillation.

Microsoft has intervened to stop Windows 11 users with LG monitors from being bombarded with annoying McAfee trial pop-ups. In response to complaints about the LG bloatware, Microsoft's Windows chief, Pavan Davuluri, said that LG has agreed to immediately disable the McAfee pop-up from its LG Monitor App Installer, and pledged that Microsoft will "keep […]

App is installed through Windows Update when certain LG monitors connect to a PC.

Xbox Insiders can stream games from their libraries for free in ad-supported streaming sessions starting today. The free streaming sessions are limited to games you already own, and sessions are capped at one hour. However, ads will only play "before sessions begin." It's also optional - you won't need to watch ads if you have […]

First four compatible titles can be run with an 11-year-old graphics card.

Microsoft is expanding its Xbox backward compatibility efforts today by bringing original Xbox games to PC. An early preview release will see four classic Xbox games available on PC today, as part of a bigger effort to bring more Xbox console games to PC in the future. The first four games are Blinx: The Time […]

What Happened On July 20, 2026, cybersecurity firm Group-IB disclosed a new espionage implant dubbed HollowGraph that hijacks compromised Microsoft 365 mailboxes to run a command-and-control (C2) channel hidden inside calendar events. The malware attaches encrypted files to calendar entries dated May 13, 2050 — far enough in the future that a mailbox owner would never scroll to them — and retrieves operator instructions from the same dead drop. All traffic moves through the Microsoft Graph API, making the activity indistinguishable from legitimate M365 usage. At least 12 systems have been infected, with three actively communicating with the threat actor between June 3 and July 9, 2026. The indicators point to a targeted espionage campaign focused on Israeli organizations . Technical Analysis HollowGraph is a lightweight .NET DLL that supports only two commands: GET and SEND . To receive tasking, it queries the compromised mailbox's calendar for an event titled in the format "Event ID: <7-char-taskID>", downloads the attached file, and decrypts it using RSA and AES-256-GCM. To exfiltrate data, the implant creates a new calendar entry titled "Boss{..}ID{..}" and uploads stolen files encrypted with the attacker's public RSA key. The Group-IB research team described the mailbox calendar as a "covert dead-drop," with HollowGraph retrieving commands from events scheduled within a fixed one-hour window between 22:00 and 23:00 UTC on the far-future date. The hybrid encryption scheme uses separate RSA key pairs for inbound and outbound channels, keeping them cryptographically isolated. A second, unencrypted channel runs over DNS tunneling . HollowGraph refreshes its Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) credentials by querying IPv6 AAAA records from the attacker-controlled domain cloudlanecdn[.]com . Each returned IPv6 address yields 14 usable payload bytes, which the malware assembles and decodes as UTF-8 text to update its logAzure.txt configuration file — a file masquerading as a

A video from Gamers Nexus explains how, after connecting a new LG UltraGear monitor to a PC running Windows 11 for the first time, Windows Update is silently installing LG driver updates and the LG Monitor App Installer, without so much as a permission pop-up or notification. The app doesn't appear to include special controls […]

Xbox is currently in a "reset" period that includes laying off around 3,200 employees over the next year, involving deep cuts at beloved studios like id Software and Obsidian Entertainment. Now, in an attempt to show that things are still running fine, the company has announced a slate of upcoming projects at Bethesda Game Studios […]

Last year, Microsoft's 13-inch Surface Laptop quickly became one of my favorite thin-and-light Windows notebooks. At $900, it was easy to recommend to anyone wanting MacBook Air-like build quality and battery life on Windows - I even convinced my sister to buy one on sale. But that was last year. This year, thanks to RAMageddon, […]

Microsoft is looking to sell its in-house AI models as more efficient and cost-effective than its competitors' models.