Wednesday Newsbytes: Microsoft Closes Upgrade Loophole – Causes Problems; Windows 10 is Back & Getting CoPilot; 95% of OpenAI Employees Threaten to Quit; 2 Million Affected in U.S. Pharmacy Breach… and more!
Wishing you and your family a very Blessed and happy Thanksgiving!
Every day we scan the tech world for interesting news in the world of technology and sometimes from outside the world of technology. Every Wednesday, we feature news articles that grabbed our attention over the past week. We hope you find this week’s ‘Wednesday Newsbytes’ informative and interesting!
Microsoft’s closing of free upgrade loophole appears to be breaking some Windows 11 and 10 PCs
Microsoft recently closed a loophole that allowed people to continue to access the free upgrade to Windows 10 (and then Windows 11), from Windows 7 or 8, but it appears there’s been an unwelcome side-effect here.
Namely that those who have previously taken the free upgrade offer in years past have reportedly found that their license key is suddenly deactivated.
Let’s outline a quick example to make the situation clearer. Say you owned a PC with Windows 7 way back when, then took the free upgrade to Windows 10 when it emerged. And down the road, you further upgraded to Windows 11.
So, you’ve been happily carrying on with your Windows 11 PC, but last week – since the mentioned loophole was closed – you decided to upgrade your graphics card.
After that upgrade, you found that Windows 11 is telling you that your license key isn’t valid – so you have to buy a new one.
That’s what has happened to The Verge, and some of its readers, and other folks who have been complaining about the situation…
Windows 10 is back, and it’s getting Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot assistant
But Windows 10’s October 2025 end-of-support date is staying put, for now.
In the last two years, Windows 11 has ushered in significant updates for most of Windows’ built-in apps, and things like the system tray, Start menu, Settings app, and taskbar have continuously evolved with each new update. But few of these changes have been made available for Windows 10, which is still, by every publicly available metric, the most-used version of Windows on the planet. (Notable exceptions include the redesigned Outlook app and continued development of Microsoft Edge.)
Today, the company is making a major exception: The new AI-powered Windows Copilot feature from Windows 11 is being backported to Windows 10 and will be available in the Windows Insider Release Preview channel for Windows 10. This version of Copilot, which will be branded as a preview at first, will be available for the Home and Pro versions of Windows 10. But it won’t be available for the “managed” versions of Windows 10 just yet—Enterprise and Education editions, as well as Pro PCs that are joined to a domain or are otherwise managed by an IT department…
95% of OpenAI employees have threatened to quit in standoff with board
OpenAI’s future hangs in the balance as staff says they’ll join former CEO at Microsoft.
The future of OpenAI remained uncertain on Tuesday after extraordinary efforts by employees and investors to oust the board had so far failed to persuade its directors to resign and reinstate co-founder Sam Altman.
People with direct knowledge of the matter said that by the end of Monday, 747 out of 770 OpenAI employees had signed a letter threatening to quit and join Microsoft if the board refused to resign and reverse their decision on Friday to sack Altman.
Venture capitalists backing the generative artificial intelligence start-up were also exploring legal measures to force the board to reverse course, according to multiple people with knowledge of their thinking.
One person at a venture fund with a stake in OpenAI said “legal action could come as soon as tomorrow,” without specifying what form that would take.
But according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations, as of Monday night the board remained resolute and was prepared to test employees’ willingness to quit.
In their letter, staff said the directors had “undermined our mission and company” in the way they fired Altman and stripped his co-founder Greg Brockman of his position on the board. Brockman subsequently quit the company…
YouTube says it’s not slowing down Firefox — just ad blockers
Users on Reddit and Hacker News are complaining that YouTube seems to have inserted an intentional five-second delay before video pages will load in Mozilla’s Firefox and occasionally some other browsers. YouTube tells The Verge that these users are right about the delay, but the browser has nothing to do with it — it’s part of the company’s efforts to quash ad blockers across all platforms.
“In the past week, users using ad blockers may have experienced suboptimal viewing, which included delays in loading, regardless of the browser they are using,” YouTube communications manager Christopher Lawton wrote in an email. Lawton wrote that disabling the ad blocker should resolve the issue, though users “may still experience a temporary delay in loading” until their browser has refreshed.
Lawton also said that users will keep seeing issues like this as YouTube’s ad-blocker detection methods improve….
Over two million users hit by top US pharmacy provider data breach
Names, medication types, and other Truepill customer data was accessed
Truepill, formerly known as Postmeds, suffered a data breach that resulted in sensitive data on more than 2.3 million patients being stolen.
The US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights breach portal listed Truepill (or rather Postmeds) as being under investigation for a data breach that affected a total of 2,364,359 people.
Furthermore, the company, a business-to-business pharmacy platform that provides pharmacy product deliveries from businesses to customers across the US via APIs, also began sending out breach notifications to affected customers, allegedly stating that it discovered the unauthorized access on August 31 2023 – although subsequent investigation revealed a data breach the day before…
Read the rest at TechRadar Pro.
Thanks for reading this week’s Wednesday Newbytes. We hope these articles were informative, interesting, fun, and helpful. Darcy & TC
