This week in Build Mode, Startup Battlefield editor Isabelle Johannessen is joined by the winner of this year’s competition, Kevin Damoa, the CEO and founder of Glīd, a logistics infrastructure company that aims to streamline the complex container shipment process.

Conservationists are racing to save the manumea, a chicken-sized bird that lives only on two Samoan islands, from extinction

Fluent v2.0 is Microsoft’s next-generation design language, and it’s now fully implemented across all Dynamics 365 Customer Service components. This milestone marks the completion of a comprehensive modernization effort, bringing a unified, intuitive, and visually engaging experience to every user—representatives, supervisors, admins, and customers alike. What makes Fluent v2.0 different? Fluent v2. The post Fluent v2.0 for Customer Service: A unified, modern experience appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

See 15 images of colorful kites from around the world

Learn how to expose your Fabric SQL Database through a GraphQL API. This session covers setup, schema generation, and query execution, showing how GraphQL can simplify data access. We’ll walk through authentication, and integration options for building a modern, data-driven app on Fabric. 0:00 Introduction 1:20 Scenario 2:45 Using GraphQL with Fabric SQL Database 5:50 Demo 14:00 Getting started ✅ Resources: What is Microsoft Fabric API for GraphQL?: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-engineering/api-graphql-overview Limitations of Microsoft Fabric API for GraphQL: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-engineering/api-graphql-limits Source control and deployment pipelines in API for GraphQL (preview): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-engineering/graphql-source-control-and-deployment Learning Path: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/training/modules/get-started-with-graphql-microsoft-fabric/ About Nicky van Vroenhoven: Nicky van Vroenhoven is a BI professional focused at the Microsoft stack and a Data Platform MVP. He mainly works with Power BI, Power Platform and T-SQL. Nicky started working with SQL Server and SSIS in 2005 in the DWH space, and later moved from Power Pivot to Power BI. After working 10 years in BI-consultancy jobs in several industries and companies, he worked for 5 years as a Power BI Administrator at a wealth management bank, and he is currently working as Unit Lead Fabric/Power BI at Powerdobs in The Netherlands. Nicky has spoken at several User Groups and conferences including SQL Saturday Events, the Power BI World Tour, SQLBits and the Fabric Community Conferences. In addition he enjoys tweeting and blogging about topics like Power BI and Power Platform at https://nickyvv.com. In his spare time Nicky likes to go running, play chess or try to improve his Rubik's cube record. He is also a husband, father of 3 and a (former) ballroom dancer. About MVPs: Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community. They are always on the "bleeding edge" and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies. They have very deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services, while also being able to bring together diverse platforms, products and solutions, to solve real world problems. MVPs make up a global community of over 4,000 technical experts and community leaders across 90 countries/regions and are driven by their passion, community spirit, and quest for knowledge. Above all and in addition to their amazing technical abilities, MVPs are always willing to help others - that's what sets them apart. Learn more: https://aka.ms/mvpprogram 📌 Let's connect: Twitter: Anna Hoffman, https://twitter.com/AnalyticAnna Twitter: AzureSQL, https://aka.ms/azuresqltw 🔴 To watch other MVP Edition episodes, see our playlist: https://aka.ms/dataexposedmvps To check out even more Data Exposed episodes, see our playlist: https://aka.ms/dataexposedyt 🔔 Subscribe to our channels for even more SQL tips: Microsoft Azure SQL: https://aka.ms/msazuresqlyt Microsoft SQL Server: https://aka.ms/mssqlserveryt Microsoft Developer: https://aka.ms/microsoftdeveloperyt #AzureSQL #SQLServer

An abandoned dog has joined a mission of peace across the world and, despite some mishaps, has stayed with it every paw of the way. During their opening 112-day peace walk in India, a group of Buddhist monks found an abandoned dog—or perhaps the dog found them. The canine, believed to be an Indian Pariah […] The post Rescue Dog Leading 19 Buddhist Monks on 2,300 Mile Peace Walk Across the US appeared first on Good News Network.

🔥 EXCLUSIVE VPN DEALS 🔥 Hit the Discount Links Below and Claim Your Offer! 👇 ✅ Get NordVPN – unbeatable speed & security ➡️ https://shop.gizmodo.com/go/2363/ ✅ Use ExpressVPN – top-rated for privacy ➡️ https://shop.gizmodo.com/go/2785/ ✅ Try Surfshark – best affordable VPN ➡️ https://shop.gizmodo.com/go/2364/ Best VPN for Xbox: 2025 Review – Best for Gaming & Streaming || Gizmodo Want the best VPN for Xbox to boost gaming speed, reduce lag, unblock streaming apps, and stay protected online? In this video, you’ll learn how to set up a VPN on Xbox through a router or Windows hotspot, plus the top VPNs for Xbox. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ 👉 Subscribe for regular tech reviews and privacy tips: https://www.youtube.com/@gizmodo ⏰ TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Introduction 00:24 - How to Use a VPN on Xbox 00:56 - Nord VPN for Xbox 02:02 - Surfshark for Xbox 02:45 - ExpressVPN for Xbox 03:36 - Final Thoughts ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Read Full Reviews: ➡️Best VPN for Xbox: https://gizmodo.com/best-vpn/xbox ➡️ NordVPN Review: https://gizmodo.com/best-vpn/nordvpn ➡️ ExpressVPN Review: https://gizmodo.com/best-vpn/expressvpn ➡️ Surfshark VPN Review: https://gizmodo.com/best-vpn/surfshark ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Legal & Affiliate Disclosure: We are affiliated but NOT sponsored by any service provider. We may earn a small commission when you use the links above. All opinions are strictly our own, based on independent research and hands-on testing. This does not impact the impartiality or accuracy of our review. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Media & Stock Acknowledgements: 🎵 Music from Artlist 📹 Video footage and SFX from Envato All assets are fully licensed for use in this video. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Stay Updated & Join the Community: ➡️ Visit our site: https://gizmodo.com ➡️ Facebook: https://facebook.com/gizmodo ➡️ Instagram: https://instagram.com/gizmodo ➡️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gizmodo ___________________________________________________________________________________________ About Gizmodo: Founded in 2002 as one of the Internet’s first tech news blogs, Gizmodo is dedicated to fiercely independent reporting and commentary on technology, science, and internet culture. The Future is Here. #gizmodo #gizmodoreview

Ten years ago, raising €1 million in Copenhagen was enough to make waves in the region’s tech scene. Today, the Nordics are turning out billion-dollar companies like Lovable — which hit $200 million in revenue just 12 months after launching.  Dennis Green-Lieber, founder of AI-powered customer intelligence platform Propane, has had a front-row seat to that shift […]

The dual celestial events will ring in the new year, although the luminous "wolf" supermoon may hamper skywatchers' view of the shooting stars

Unify your security data and use AI to reason over your entire digital estate with Microsoft Sentinel. See how threats evolve in real time, map attack paths, and understand which assets are most at risk. Visualize relationships across users, devices, and resources to pinpoint vulnerabilities and focus your response where it matters most. Using natural language, you can investigate faster. Ask questions, get context, and act on insights without writing complex queries. Build and extend your own identity graphs to include multicloud systems like Salesforce, enriching your view of risk. Vandana Mahtani, Microsoft Sentinel Principal PM, shares how to detect, investigate, and disrupt threats in one connected experience with Microsoft Sentinel. You can find more info on custom graphs: https://aka.ms/sentinel/graph/ignite and sign-up for preview at: https://aka.ms/sentinel/graph/customsignup ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft's official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. • Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries • Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog • Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: • Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics • Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ • Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ • Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics #MicrosoftSentinel #CyberSecurity #ThreatDetection #SecurityOperations

Before the introduction of TMDL (Tabular Model Definition Language), modeling tasks in Power BI Desktop was almost entirely GUI-driven. Any advanced tabular modeling tasks required external tools like Tabular Editor, ALM Toolkit, or SQL Server Management Studio. These tools are not created by Microsoft, many organizations do not allow them, and some require additional licensing. In this blog, let’s talk about a few tasks that the new TMDL view enables directly inside Power BI Desktop tasks that were not possible using the GUI at the time of writing. Changing the Storage Mode Before TMDL, switching a table from Import to DirectQuery was not possible in the GUI. TMDL makes it simple.   * Open your semantic model. * Switch to the TMDL view. * Select the table in the Model Explorer on the right. 4. Click Script TMDL to → Script tab.   5. A new tab will open with the TMDL script for creating or replacing the table. 6. Scroll down to the partition definition and find the mode attribute 7. Change the value to the desired storage mode and click Apply. That's it, the storage mode is now updated.       Note: If you switch from DirectQuery to Import, remember to refresh the table so that data loads into the model. You can use the same approach to switch to other modes like Dual. Object-Level Security Implementation Before TMDL, implementing OLS required Tabular Editor or SSMS. Now it can be done directly in Power BI Desktop. Below is an example that creates a role called RestrictEmployeeId and hides the employeeId column in the Employee table: Another example that hides the entire Employee table:   Write your own script based on your model and run it in the TMDL view.   You can see the created roles in Model Explorer.   Creation of Perspectives If you have used the Personalized Visuals feature, you may already know what Perspectives are. They are used to provide a simplified, focused view of a model. Earlier, creating perspectives required Tabular Editor. TMDL now supports it directly. The example below creates a perspective called EmployeePerspective that includes selected columns from two tables: Run a similar script based on your model in the TMDL view.   Your perspective will appear in Model Explorer.   Addition of Cultures and Translations If you have created multi-language Power BI reports, you may already know about Cultures. Previously, adding a new language or translation required Translation Builder or Tabular Editor. With TMDL, you can define cultures directly. Example: Adding Spanish (es-ES) language and translating several objects:   Run the script in the TMDL view.   The culture will appear in Model Explorer.     Configuration of Detail Rows Expressions If you build self-service datasets for Excel users, you may already know about Detail Rows. This property controls exactly which columns are returned when users drill through in Excel PivotTables connected to your Power BI semantic model. Before TMDL, setting this property required Tabular Editor. Now it can be done in Desktop. The example below creates a measure EmployeeCount and defines a Detail Rows expression for it:   Run this script in the TMDL view.   To validate the property, you can run a DAX query: EVALUATE DETAILROWS([EmployeeCount])   Creating Custom Table Partitions Before TMDL, splitting a table into custom partitions required Tabular Editor or other external tools. Now this can be done directly in Desktop. Script your table into TMDL view, locate the partition section, and modify it as needed. Example: Splitting the Employee table into two partitions:   Run the script in the TMDL view.   You will see the new partitions under the table in Model Explorer. Note: After updating the partitions, refresh the data in the table. I hope you find this information useful, If I missed any other TMDL capabilities that were not possible through the Power BI Desktop GUI, please share them with me. Happy Learning!

Tiny plants, like moss, are easy to overlook. They’re often as small as an eyelash, and they tend to grow on the ground in dark, wet places. But these small plants sometimes turn out to be big clues in forensic cases. A team of scientists learned that firsthand in 2013, when they were asked to […] The post Moss is So Unique it’s Acted Like Fingerprints to Help Solve a Dozen Crimes appeared first on Good News Network.

AI code editors are becoming popular because they let developers write code much faster than before. But they don’t always get it right on the first try, especially with distributed, microservices-based applications running in the cloud. That means the usefulness of AI-generated code often depends on the quality of feedback you give it. The closer your testing environment is to the real thing, the better the feedback, and the more confident you can be that the code actually works. In this episode, we’ll look at how mirrord, an open-source tool that lets developers run local code inside a Kubernetes cluster without deploying, makes it possible to test AI-generated code in a realistic environment, without the slow feedback cycles of CI pipelines or staging deployments. ✅ Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 03:04 Current AI development Workflow 05:43 What's the proposed development workflow 08:16 Testing AI generated code in a realistic environment 09:20 How does mirrord work? 13:07 What does mirrord enable? 14:37 mirrord demo 26:46 What's next and How to get started ✅ Resources: mirrord https://metalbear.com/mirrord/ Source code https://github.com/metalbear-co/mirrord Azure mirrord Blog: https://blog.aks.azure.com/2024/12/04/mirrord-on-aks Debugging Apps on AKS with mirrord https://youtu.be/0tf65d5rn1Y 📌 Let's connect: Jorge Arteiro | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jorgearteiro Arsh Sharma | https://www.linkedin.com/in/arsh4/ Subscribe to the Open at Microsoft: https://aka.ms/OpenAtMicrosoft Open at Microsoft Playlist: https://aka.ms/OpenAtMicrosoftPlaylist 📝Submit Your OSS Project for Open at Microsoft https://aka.ms/OpenAtMsCFP New episode on Tuesdays!

Microsoft Foundry already offers the widest selection of models of any cloud and with today’s partnership announcement with Anthropic, we’re proud that Azure is now the only cloud providing access to both Claude and GPT frontier models to customers on one platform. The post Introducing Anthropic’s Claude models in Microsoft Foundry: Bringing Frontier intelligence to Azure appeared first on Microsoft Azure Blog.

On January 1, 2026, copyrights will expire for comics, books, movies, musical compositions and other creative works from 1930, as well as sound recordings from 1925

The Premier League unified massive, diverse datasets and enabled real-time, personalized fan experiences using Microsoft Azure AI, cloud, and analytics. Learn more: https://msft.it/6052tp5W0 #MicrosoftAzure #PremierLeague #MSIgnite25

Today is also National Science Fiction Day, a date that honors the birth, 106 years ago, of literary sci-fi genius Isaac Asimov. A Russian immigrant in Brooklyn, he taught himself to read at age 5, skipped several grades, and got his high school diploma at 15. He sold his first short story at the age […] The post Good News in History, January 2 appeared first on Good News Network.

The book has been donated jointly to Christ Church and the Bodleian Library, which are both part of the University of Oxford

Build powerful AI apps that run locally on any device—Windows, macOS, or mobile—without relying on the cloud using Foundry Local. Leverage full hardware performance, keep data private, reduce latency, and predict costs, even in offline or low-connectivity scenarios. Simplify development and deploy AI apps across diverse hardware and OS platforms with the Foundry Local SDK. Manage models locally, switch AI engines easily, and deliver consistent, multi-modal experiences, voice or text, without complex cross-platform setup. Raji Rajagopalan, Microsoft CoreAI Vice President, shares how to start quickly, test locally, and scale confidently. ► Unfamiliar with Microsoft Mechanics? As Microsoft's official video series for IT, you can watch and share valuable content and demos of current and upcoming tech from the people who build it at Microsoft. • Subscribe to our YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MicrosoftMechanicsSeries • Talk with other IT Pros, join us on the Microsoft Tech Community: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-mechanics-blog/bg-p/MicrosoftMechanicsBlog • Watch or listen from anywhere, subscribe to our podcast: https://microsoftmechanics.libsyn.com/podcast ► Keep getting this insider knowledge, join us on social: • Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MSFTMechanics • Share knowledge on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/microsoft-mechanics/ • Enjoy us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/msftmechanics/ • Loosen up with us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@msftmechanics #LocalAI #FoundryLocalSDK #aiapps #dataprivacy

An exoskeleton for the entire arm has been invented and designed in Norway to help stroke victims recover the use of their arms. It detects and then amplifies tiny movements through the arm and shoulder, and the developers hope to launch it as a fully commercial product this year. Today, more and more people are […] The post ‘It Feels Like Me Again’: World’s First Arm Exoskeleton Gives Stroke Patients Independence appeared first on Good News Network.

Customers expect quick and smooth help when they reach out to customer support—whether it’s about a delayed order, a product question, or a service issue. Good case management means keeping track of all these requests and associated customer conversations to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.  Managing these cases is not always easy. The post Effortlessly create and update cases with Case Management Agent appeared first on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Blog.

When you are working on Power BI, one of the fundamental aspects of building a robust data model is, defining how different tables are related to each other. This relationship determines how filters and slicers affect the data, and one of the key settings you will encounter is the Cross Filter Direction. But what does this actually mean, and how does changing it impact your report’s behaviour?   I will walk you through in this blog the feature of Cross Filter Direction in Power BI. the types of filtering relationships available, the potential effects of changing these directions, and the advantages and considerations of each approach.

Smithsonian paleoanthropologists examine the year’s most fascinating revelations

This video is Part 4 of the Microsoft Foundry Workflows video series. Join April as she provides a guided tutorial for how to migrate your Microsoft Foundry workflow to a code-first experience using Visual Studio Code (local). Once you have the code for your workflow, you can continue to iterate on your workflow directly in the VS Code editor with the Microsoft Foundry extension. In this video, April shows you how to set up your local environment prior to running and testing your workflow. April also shows you how to modify the workflow code with the help of GitHub Code Pilot Agent Mode. Try it yourself in Microsoft Foundry: https://ai.azure.com Learn More about Azure AI Foundry Model and Tools announcements at https://aka.ms/model-mondays Join the Discord: https://aka.ms/insideMF/discord Hop on Forum: https://aka.ms/insideMF/forum Chapter Markers 00:00 - 00:02 - Introduction 00:03 - 01:30 - Open the workflow in VS Code (local) 01:31 - 05:07 - Setup local environment 05:08 - 07:59 - Modify the workflow code with GitHub Copilot Agent Mode 08:00 - 11:36 - Run the workflow code

125 years ago today, the Federation of Australia was born. The Constitution of Australia came into force, uniting the 6 colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia under one federal government. The idea of being ‘Australian’ had been celebrated in songs and poems for decades; finally, a fireworks display […] The post Good News in History, January 1 appeared first on Good News Network.