Microsoft offers buyouts to around 60,000 employees, reports say
The Hot Take: That's 1/4 of their workforce, that is insane.
The buyout offers mark Microsoft's latest efforts to cut costs and rework its workforce.
Read the full articleMicrosoft makes Windows settings backup the default in 26H2
The Hot Take: More push for cloud space I'd assume.
Windows 11 26H2 is out, and Microsoft has enabled Windows settings backup by default, a move that could send administrators scrambling to opt out where they once had to opt in. The latest release hasn't made a lot of shockwaves in the community featurewise. Users with up-to-date versions of 25H2 will unlikely notice much difference â 26H2 has the same code base, delivered via an enablement package. It even has the same set of known issues, although all are now "mitigated" in one way or another. However, administrators will spot severalâŚ
Read the full articleFive things Windows 11 quietly keeps about you, and which ones actually matter
The Hot Take: No privacy any where. Except maybe linux but then you get emulated gaming... I just don't like that emulation overhead i want bare metal raw performance.
A viral post on X claims that Windows keeps a thumbnail of every photo youâve ever deleted, stored secretly in a file called thumbcache_256.db. It sounds scary for a desktop OS used by 1.5 billion people. The post has 1.7M views so far, and I received several DMs asking if they should follow the instructions in the tweet. To be fair, this is a Windows feature. File Explorer does keep a thumbnail cache, so it doesnât have to regenerate image previews when needed. However, the post goes too far on multiple levels. Viral post claiming WindowsâŚ
Read the full articleMicrosoft plans to deprecate Windows Deployment Services
The Hot Take: Pushing all to cloud soon?
Microsoft announced it will deprecate the Windows Deployment Services (WDS) server role starting with the next Windows Server release. [...]
Read the full articleMicrosoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes
The Hot Take: I'm gonna take a guess because we don't own it, we just license it is why.
More games are taking advantage of the free-to-play model, and Microsoft is building systems designed to deliver ads without disrupting the gaming experience. According to Respawn First, the system would first give players some ad-free playtime, which could either be based on time or in-game progress, such as levels and bosses. Once this expires, the company will then open a window and briefly serve âpromoted content.â However, this system will not just show ads out of the blue. Instead, it will work with the game engine so that they will onlyâŚ
Read the full articleRust is Now a 'Tier One' Language at Microsoft
The Hot Take: Interesting.
The Register reports: When Microsoft's developers and engineers sit down to code, they can now choose to work in Rust, which Redmond has added to its list of canonical languages. "Rust now is a Tier One language at Microsoft, and that just means that it sits among C++, C# and TypeScript as the best supported languages for internal development in the company," explained Victor Ciura, Microsoft principal engineer for the Rust tooling team, during a keynote talk today at this year's annual RustConf, being held this week in MontrĂŠal.âŚ
Read the full articleMicrosoft sounds alarm as perfect-10 Entra ID flaw comes under attack
The Hot Take: Must be bad if they're not giving any details.
Microsoft has fixed a maximum-severity vulnerability in Entra ID that attackers were already exploiting in the wild. Tracked as CVE-2026-69836, the vulnerability carries the maximum CVSS score of 10.0 and could allow an unauthenticated attacker to execute code remotely in Microsoft's cloud identity service. Microsoft disclosed the flaw on Thursday, along with the unwelcome news that exploitation had already been detected. Entra ID, formerly known as Azure Active Directory, sits at the heart of identity and access management for MicrosoftâŚ
Read the full articleMicrosoft confirms it accidentally installed new OneDrive app on Windows 11 PCs, and thereâs no easy way to remove it yet
The Hot Take: Need to get those private details of everyone's life....
Microsoft told Windows Latest that it accidentally shipped the AI-powered OneDrive Photos app on Windows 11 more broadly than it should have, which explains why enterprise PCs where the app doesnât even work now have to deal with it. Iâm told that Microsoft is going to âfix it,â which possibly suggests that the app will be rolled back, but I think itâll stay on most PCs. If you havenât seen the app yet, hereâs what it looks like out of the box (yes, it has access to all your folders by default): âOneDrive Photosâ isnât exactly newâŚ
Read the full articleMicrosoft never learns, IT admins rage as a new OneDrive app invades Windows 11 and keeps coming back when you remove it
The Hot Take: Sorry I prefer privacy on my own cloud. GTFOH.
As Windows Latest first reported, Microsoft is quietly installing âOneDrive Photosâ on PCs, and our tests show that itâs tied to the OneDrive sync client, which is already pre-installed on Windows. Initially, I assumed that only consumers would be getting the app, but it turns out that itâs being pushed to enterprise customers as well. Windows Latest spoke to IT admins and found that Microsoft is forcing the OneDrive Photos app onto enterprise PCs, including those that use Microsoft Intune. Worse, OneDrive Photos works only with a personalâŚ
Read the full articleWindows 11 is quietly installing OneDrive Photos, and it wants to scan your photos for faces if you allow it
The Hot Take: Just deeper and deeper into our lives.... I dropped OneDrive because the "backup" nag screens. Thankfully I have Synology NAS with Drive client to replace it.
The year is 2026, and Iâm still amazed when I find a new entry in my Start menuâs All apps list for an app I donât remember installing. This time, itâs Microsoft again, and the product is OneDrive Photos, which appears to be yet another photo editor and viewer for Windows 11 that nobody asked for. While searching for Microsoft Photos, a new app called âOneDrive Photosâ showed up in my results out of nowhere, and it appears to have arrived either via a Windows Update or an update for the OneDrive sync client on Windows. For thoseâŚ
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