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The AI Free Ride Is Starting to End

AI Pricing Shock Hits Microsoft, GitHub and Enterprise Budgets - Chicago IT Support & Cyber Security | Forward Technologies AI’s subsidy era is ending as Microsoft, GitHub and Uber face rising usage-based costs that challenge enterprise AI budgets.

A new class action lawsuit filed in California alleges that OpenAI shared ChatGPT user data, including query topics, user IDs, and email addresses, with Google and Meta through tracking tools embedded on the ChatGPT website. 

The lawsuit specifically claims OpenAI used technologies such as Meta Pixel and Google Analytics that may have transmitted user interaction data for analytics and advertising purposes without proper consent. 

Latest blog...

Hackers Are Now Using Microsoft Teams to Break Into Corporate Networks

Microsoft Teams Phishing Attacks Target Corporate Networks - Chicago IT Support & Cyber Security | Forward Technologies Hackers are abusing Microsoft Teams to impersonate IT support, run malicious commands, and breach corporate networks in minutes.

🚨 Rapid7 Labs has discovered an authentication bypass vuln. affecting Catalyst SD-WAN Controller (FKA vSmart).

CVE-2026-20182 has a Critical CVSSv3.1 score of 10.0 and allows a remote unauth. attacker to perform privileged operations. Read on:

r-7.co

In the 1980s, Microsoft and IBM teamed up to build what they thought would be the future of personal computing.

It was called OS/2.

And for a while, there was a very real chance Windows might never dominate the desktop.

OS/2 was designed to completely replace MS-DOS. It was a true next-generation operating system: 32-bit architecture, preemptive multitasking, protected memory, and enterprise-level stability years ahead of consumer Windows.

While Windows 3.x and even early Windows 95 systems were famous for crashing, OS/2 machines could run for months without a reboot. Banks trusted it. Industrial systems trusted it. ATMs around the world ran on OS/2 for decades.

Then the partnership imploded.

IBM and Microsoft had a massive falling out over the future of the platform. Microsoft decided Windows was the better long-term bet and walked away to focus entirely on it. Once that happened, the software ecosystem around OS/2 began to collapse. Developers followed Microsoft. Applications followed developers. Windows became unstoppable.

IBM continued supporting OS/2 for enterprise customers until 2006, mostly because enormous industries still depended on it and replacing those systems would have cost fortunes.

Most people assumed that was the end of the story.

It wasn’t.

In 2017, a small company called Arca Noae licensed the technology from IBM and released ArcaOS, a modern continuation of OS/2.

Amazingly, it still receives updates today.

Modern USB support. Updated drivers. Better hardware compatibility. Ongoing maintenance in 2026.

Why? Because thousands of mission-critical systems still depend on software written for OS/2 decades ago, and rewriting those systems would cost millions.

Most operating systems disappear when they lose the market.

OS/2 simply refused to die.

We regret to inform you that Ask Jeeves is dead. The site closed yesterday. Web 1.0 lost another founder.

Ask Jeeves: June 3, 1996 - May 1, 2026.

GitHub outages since the Microsoft acquisition…

"Microsoft fired the skilled people, leaving flowchart followers"

A zero-day "BlueHammer" exploit was recently published on GitHub in response to alleged MSRC failures, and although Microsoft has released a patch, it was live for two weeks.

The worst part about the incident is that, according to the leaker, it apparently could have been prevented.

Two giants, now mostly forgotten.

Back in 1996, Netscape Navigator owned nearly 90% of the browser market. For a lot of people, it was the internet. Around that same time, AltaVista dominated search, handling roughly 100 million queries a day, which was massive for that era.

Today, both are gone. Netscape was crushed by Internet Explorer bundled with Windows. AltaVista was wiped out by Google.

From total dominance to a footnote in a single generation. Brutal.

Breaking: Microsoft quietly drops Copilot branding from Notepad and Snipping Tool in Windows 11.

This lines up with its push to clean up the experience. Notepad now shows a simple “Writing tools” icon, and the Copilot button is gone from Snipping Tool.

The AI features are still there, just without the branding everywhere.

Probably the smarter move. People were getting tired of it.