Richard Hay
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winobs.com
Richard Hay
@winobs.com
Keeping an eye on tech!

Deacon in the Roman Catholic Church. Tech Blogger & Podcaster.

Ex-Microsoft and Ex-Microsoft MVP.

"Tech Deacon of Bluesky"

Views & tweets are mine.

#BlessedBeyondMeasure
Shared: Microsoft says it will spend $10B to build a data center park in Sines, Portugal, in partnership with Portuguese developer Start Campus and UK startup Nscale (Henrique Almeida/Bloomberg) ift.tt/DNOE5nz
#WinObsWiKi
Microsoft says it will spend $10B to build a data center park in Sines, Portugal, in partnership with Portuguese developer Start Campus and UK startup Nscale
By Henrique Almeida / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
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November 11, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Shared: Paramount Plus prices are increasing in January 2026 ift.tt/N0dAGZH
#WinObsWiKi
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November 11, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Shared: The hidden Samsung Wallet feature that everyone forgets to use ift.tt/NYJouPC
#WinObsWiKi
The hidden Samsung Wallet feature that everyone forgets to use
Most users miss this simple Samsung Wallet trick
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November 11, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Shared: Samsung rolls out its Vision AI Companion, a generative AI-powered upgrade to its Bixby assistant, across its 2025 TV lineup, with support for 10 languages (Dominic Preston/The Verge) ift.tt/FVO9aPL
#WinObsWiKi
Samsung rolls out its Vision AI Companion, a generative AI-powered upgrade to its Bixby assistant, across its 2025 TV lineup, with support for 10 languages
By Dominic Preston / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.
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November 11, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Shared: Firefox 145 ships with a handy tab group improvement, MKV support and better fingerprinting protection ift.tt/3fSUjuc
#WinObsWiKi
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November 11, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Shared: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says his new superintelligence team will build "frontier-grade research capability" and Microsoft needs AI self-sufficiency (Ashley Stewart/Business Insider) ift.tt/iLrqQvt
#WinObsWiKi
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman says his new superintelligence team will build “frontier-grade research capability” and Microsoft needs AI self-sufficiency
By Ashley Stewart / Business Insider. View the full context on Techmeme.
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November 11, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Shared: Behind the scenes on how Windows 95 application compatibility patched broken programs ift.tt/4YgBfov
#WinObsWiKi
Behind the scenes on how Windows 95 application compatibility patched broken programs - The Old New Thing
Replacing bytes with the greatest of care.
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November 11, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop

#LOTH
#MorningPrayer
#BreviaryViews
November 11, 2025 at 12:23 PM
Happy Birthday Marine!
November 10, 2025 at 9:47 PM
MY HERO!
I'm just gonna say it. I don't care about people's opinions... I like candy corn.
November 10, 2025 at 9:43 PM
Shared: Microsoft named Leader and Outperformer in the 2025 GigaOm Radar for Semantic Layers & Metric Stores  ift.tt/WzIR7Dx
#WinObsWiKi
Microsoft named Leader and Outperformer in the 2025 GigaOm Radar for Semantic Layers & Metric Stores  | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsoft Fabric
In today’s data-driven world, semantic models have become the backbone of trustworthy analytics. They define business logic, metrics, and relationships that turn raw data into meaningful, trusted and...
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November 10, 2025 at 9:19 PM
Shared: Advancing security with Windows and Surface | Microsoft SFI Report Nov 2025 ift.tt/s8pNHmX
#WinObsWiKi
Advancing security with Windows and Surface | Microsoft SFI Report Nov 2025
A company-wide commitment to security As Microsoft continues to make investments in security and reliability and advance the goals of our
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November 10, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Shared: ​​Securing our future: November 2025 progress report on Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative ​​  ift.tt/bruCGiD
#WinObsWiKi
Latest progress update on Microsoft’s Secure Future Initiative | Microsoft Security Blog
Read more about the key updates and milestones of Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative in the November 2025 SFI progress report. 
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November 10, 2025 at 7:04 PM
Reposted by Richard Hay
There's been a big ho-hah in security circles about the new ability in #MicrosoftTeams to start a chat with an email address. Those who think this is an issue might not have factored the controls to limit the feature. Here's the situation: office365itpros.com/2025/11/10/c...
#Microsoft365
Teams Chat with Email Address Feature Causes Some Heartburn
A new Teams feature allows users to initiate a chat with email address. This caused some commotion in the security community, but it's not that bad.
office365itpros.com
November 10, 2025 at 10:06 AM
Shared: Microsoft announces Windows 11 version 26H1, now available for testing ift.tt/l1JAq6d
#WinObsWiKi
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November 8, 2025 at 6:15 PM
Shared: Microsoft improving recovery, redesigning widgets UI with new Windows 11 build 26220.7070 ift.tt/GrbOT6c
#WinObsWiKi
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November 8, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Reposted by Richard Hay
❗ Breaking: notifications from @ mentions in commit messages will be removed next month. 👀
https://github.blog/changelog/2025-11-07-removing-notifications-for-mentions-in-commit-messages/
November 8, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Shared: The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences ift.tt/HWrqMNg
#WinObsWiKi
The government shutdown is starting to have cosmic consequences
“The FAA is concerned with the system’s ability to maintain the current volume of operations.”…
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November 8, 2025 at 4:15 PM
Reposted by Richard Hay
Pushing passkeys forward: Microsoft’s latest updates for simpler, safer sign-ins
Happy World Passkey Day! As the world shifts from passwords to passkeys, we’re excited to join the FIDO Alliance in leaving “World Password Day” behind to celebrate the very first “World Passkey Day.” To commemorate this renaming, Microsoft and dozens of other organizations have taken the Passkey Pledge to work toward increasing the implementation and adoption of passkeys over the coming year. For Microsoft, taking the pledge continues our commitment to a future where every sign in is simple and secure. For detailed information on why passkeys are better than passwords, visit our website: What is a Passkey? Secure Signins | Microsoft Security The journey toward passwordless sign-in Ten years ago, Microsoft had a bold idea. Instead of signing in using clumsy and insecure passwords, what if you could simply smile? With this vision in mind, Microsoft introduced Windows Hello, a new way for users to securely sign in to their accounts with their face, fingerprint, or PIN. Windows Hello helped lay the foundation for an entirely new era of authentication.1 Today, more than 99% of people who sign into their Windows devices with their Microsoft account do so using Windows Hello. However, as the world and our digital lives evolved, it became clear that just signing into your device without a password isn’t enough. To keep your digital life safe, you need a way to sign into any account without a password. As part of an industry-wide effort, Microsoft has collaborated closely with the FIDO Alliance, and with platform partners to develop passkeys: a standards-based phishing-resistant authentication method that replaces passwords. Now you can sign in to any supported app or website with a passkey using your face, fingerprint, or PIN. Hundreds of websites, representing billions of accounts, now support signing in with a passkey. The world is changing! For a list of websites that support passkeys, visit Passkey Directory – FIDO Alliance. Over the past decade, we’ve observed two important, coinciding trends: people have grown increasingly accustomed to signing into their devices without passwords, and the number of password-based cyberattacks has increased dramatically. Bad actors know that the password age is ending, and that the number of easily compromised accounts is shrinking. In response, these bad actors are devoting considerable resources to automating brute force and phishing attacks against any account still protected by a password. Last year, we observed a staggering 7,000 password attacks per second (more than double the rate from 2023).2 As passkeys become the new standard, expect increased pressure from cyberattackers on any accounts still protected by passwords or other phishable sign-in methods. Our users love signing into their Microsoft accounts with passkeys Last year, we introduced passkey support for Microsoft accounts for our consumer apps and services like Xbox and Copilot, and now we see nearly a million passkeys registered every day. Because they’re not entering complex characters or one-time codes, users signing in with passkeys are three times more successful at getting into their account than password users (about 98% versus 32%). When you use a passkey, you get into your account much quicker too! Passkey sign-ins are eight times faster than a password and multifactor authentication. We believe that great usability and great security go hand in hand, so as we continue our transition to a passwordless world, we’re introducing some significant changes: * New sign-in user experience (UX): Earlier this year, we launched a new visual style that simplifies the sign-in and sign-up experience. The new design is modernized and streamlined and prioritizes passwordless methods for sign-in and sign-up.3 * New accounts are passwordless by default: As part of this simplified UX, we’re changing the default behavior for new accounts. Brand new Microsoft accounts will now be “passwordless by default.” New users will have several passwordless options for signing into their account and they’ll never need to enroll a password. Existing users can visit their account settings to delete their password. * Passwordless-preferred sign-in: We’re also making it simpler to sign in with safer options. Instead of showing you all the possible ways for you to sign in, we automatically detect the best available method on your account and set that as the default. For example, if you have a password and “one time code” set up on your account, we’ll prompt you to sign in with your one time code instead of your password. After you’re signed in, you’ll be prompted to enroll a passkey. Then the next time you sign in, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your passkey. This simplified experience gets you signed in faster and in our experiments has reduced password use by over 20%. As more people enroll passkeys, the number of password authentications will continue to decline until we can eventually remove password support altogether. Although passwords have been around for centuries, we hope their reign over our online world is ending. Billions of times a day, people all over the world sign into their accounts. According to the FIDO Alliance, more than 15 billion user accounts can now sign in using passkeys instead of passwords. But we need billions more to make every sign-in passwordless. So, to observe World Passkey Day, take the leap. Start by securing at least one of your accounts—ideally as many as you can—with a passkey. Protect your digital life from unauthorized access and make signing in faster, easier, and most importantly, more secure. To create a passkey for signing into your Microsoft account, visit here. If you’re using Windows, you can also learn how to save and manage passkeys here: Save a passkey in Windows – Microsoft Support Learn more with Microsoft Security To learn more about Microsoft Security solutions, visit our website. Bookmark the Security blog to keep up with our expert coverage on security matters. Also, follow us on LinkedIn (Microsoft Security) and X (@MSFTSecurity) for the latest news and updates on cybersecurity. --- 1A breakthrough year for passwordless technology, Alex Simons. December 17, 2020. 2Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2024 3New user experience for customer authentication, Robin Goldstein. March 26, 2025. The post Pushing passkeys forward: Microsoft’s latest updates for simpler, safer sign-ins appeared first on Microsoft Security Blog.
dlvr.it
November 8, 2025 at 3:29 PM
Shared: A look at the advantages and pitfalls of AI use in major newsrooms: from sifting through big datasets to suggesting headlines to causing embarrassing errors (New York Times) ift.tt/z9XoDCM
#WinObsWiKi
A look at the advantages and pitfalls of AI use in major newsrooms: from sifting through big datasets to suggesting headlines to causing embarrassing errors
From New York Times. View the full context on Mediagazer.
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November 8, 2025 at 3:53 PM
Shared: Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Streamlined Authentication process with OAuth for Connector Admins ift.tt/Q7tg5S1
#WinObsWiKi
Microsoft 365 Roadmap | Microsoft 365
Global
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November 8, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Saturday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

#LOTH
#MorningPrayer
#BreviaryViews
November 8, 2025 at 2:13 PM