The decade-long hole in Microsoft Secure Boot and what to do about it
Security researchers at ESET have detailed a hole in Microsoft Secure Boot that was quietly exploitable for over a decade. The finding is uncomfortable because Secure Boot is one of the foundational trust mechanisms on modern PCs, and the bypass hinges on eleven old firmware shims that Microsoft still signed and that UEFI systems continued […]
pgrust shows Postgres can catch up on analytics with batching and SIMD
A Rust-based Postgres rewrite called pgrust has been making the rounds, and its claim is hard to ignore: it runs analytical queries hundreds of times faster than stock Postgres. The author’s write-up walks through how, and the techniques are refreshingly concrete. This is not a vaporware benchmark grab, it is a working implementation that passes […]
OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 upgrade brings better accuracy and free unlimited chats
OpenAI shipped a meaningful upgrade to ChatGPT this week, and the headline is simple: most of it lands for free users too. The company introduced GPT-5.6 Sol for Plus and Pro subscribers, made GPT-5.6 Luna the default for Free and Go tiers, and gave everyone a couple of new controls over how the model reasons. […]
TONTOU CPU Attack Bypasses Spectre v2 Fixes and Leaks Kernel Secrets
Eight years after Spectre upended assumptions about CPU security, a new attack from MIT CSAIL shows the mitigations we built to contain it still have holes. TONTOU, short for time-of-neutralization to time-of-use, bypasses Spectre v2 defenses on AMD and Intel CPUs and has been demonstrated leaking Linux password hashes straight out of kernel memory. It […]
Databricks Genie Free Usage Extended Through January 2027
Databricks just pushed the free usage window for its conversational analytics tools out to January 31, 2027. If you have been sitting on the fence about Genie, that is a meaningful amount of extra runway to test it for real, with real people, before you pay for it. Here is what the extension actually covers […]
Migrate AWS FSx to Azure Files with Azure Storage Mover
Moving file workloads between clouds used to mean a painful mix of scripts, third-party tools, and manual downtime. Microsoft just made part of that easier with a new public preview that migrates files from AWS FSx for Windows File Server straight into Azure Files. If you run SMB-based Windows file workloads on AWS and want […]
Explicit Proxy in Azure Firewall Goes GA: An Alternative to Route-Based Inspection
Azure Firewall’s explicit proxy mode reached general availability this month. For anyone who has fought with user-defined routes to steer outbound traffic through a firewall, this is a meaningful change. Instead of relying on transparent, route-based interception, you can now point applications and browsers directly at the firewall as a proxy. Explicit proxy versus the […]
SharePoint Connector for Azure Databricks Reaches GA: Enterprise Content Meets the Lakehouse
Microsoft made the SharePoint connector for Azure Databricks generally available this week. For teams that live in both worlds, OneDrive and SharePoint holding the documents, Databricks running the analytics, this removes a whole layer of glue code. The connector, built on Lakeflow Connect, lets you pull SharePoint sites, lists, and files straight into the lakehouse. […]
Unity AI Gateway Goes GA on Azure Databricks: AI Governance Gets a Control Plane
Azure Databricks took another step toward putting real governance around generative AI this week. Unity AI Gateway, which centralizes management for AI models, agents, tools, and MCP services, hit general availability. For teams that have been running ad hoc AI workloads with no clear control plane, this is the signal to start consolidating. What Unity […]
Azure Private Link now works over IPv6
Azure Private Link has started supporting IPv6, in public preview. The update lets you reach Azure PaaS services like Azure Storage and Azure SQL Database over IPv6-based connectivity, using IPv6 private endpoints from clients inside an Azure virtual network. For anyone running an IPv6 or dual-stack estate, this closes a long standing gap in the […]
Azure SQL becomes a first class knowledge source for Foundry IQ
Microsoft Foundry has started letting Azure SQL Database feed AI systems directly. Azure SQL is now a first class knowledge source in Azure AI Search, available in public preview. In plain terms, teams building Copilot, RAG, and agentic experiences can point their retrieval layer at relational tables without first copying everything into a separate vector […]
Azure Virtual Network routing appliance hits general availability
Azure has made its Virtual Network routing appliance generally available for production workloads. The move gives teams a managed alternative to the usual stack of VM-based network virtual appliances (NVAs) that have anchored hub-and-spoke designs for years. It also marks August 4, 2026 as the date the service stopped being a preview experiment and became […]