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From time to time, Microsoft deprecates and removes Windows features when the company feels they have run its course. Back in September 2024, the company announced that it would no longer add new features to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS). This followed a previous June 2024 announcement when the tech giant stated that driver synchronization updates via WSUS would stop. Yesterday, the company issued a reminder for the same as the service will be deprecated on April 18 2025 which is in less than three months. Microsoft has added that driver updates will be available via the Microsoft Update Catalog and it is recommended to transition to Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopatch or use Device Driver packages. Microsoft writes: Microsoft had previously reasoned that organizations have mostly moved on from WSUS driver synchronization and thus the transition to something more modern would not be too difficult for both parties involved: Aside from WSUS driver sync, Microsoft is also removing or has already started removing other features like DirectAccess, NTLM protocol, and many more. And while not exactly a feature, Neowin noticed recently that it is killing a very useful webpage where every official Windows 10/11 theme is hosted for easy access and download. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Oracle would run TikTok’s global operations while Microsoft is in talks to invest, according to NPR Oracle and a group of investors that includes Microsoft are in talks to take over TikTok’s global operations, reports NPR. The deal, which the White House is reportedly negotiating, would see ByteDance keeping a minority stake in TikTok while “the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle.” Oracle’s server network already provides the bulk of TikTok’s backbone, and under the deal, the company would “effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok,” according to one of NPR’s anonymous sources, who added that the agreement’s goal is to “minimize Chinese ownership.” Microsoft’s reported involvement isn’t clear beyond that it is “engaged in the talks.” The company was also in the mix with Oracle and Walmart in a 2020 bid to take over TikTok that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had called “a poison[ed] chalice.” Walmart reportedly isn’t involved this time around “after balking at the estimated price” of the app. News of the talks comes after President Trump issued an executive order giving TikTok and others a 75-day reprieve from any enforcement action related to the United States’ requirement that ByteDance divest from TikTok. Trump had previously floated the possibility of a “joint venture” in which the US owns 50 percent of the company. We’ve reached out to Oracle, Microsoft, TikTok, and the White House for comment. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

It's been four months since Apple released the iOS 18 software update for iPhone Xs and later. The new iOS update brought some useful features to the iPhones, including the new "Apps" page, Eye Tracking, Vehicle Motion Cues, dark mode for icons, delete large files, and the ability to lock and hide iOS 18 apps. Given Apple's tight control over the iPhone's software development, it has been a trend over the years that iOS updates are quick to reach the majority of iPhones just months after release. This year's case is also nothing different. Apple has released the updated market share numbers for iOS 18, which give an idea of what percentage of iPhones are running the latest software update. Here are some key takeaways: 76% of all devices (including iPhone 14/15/16 series) released in the last four years run iOS 18. 68% of all devices run iOS 18. The previous version, iOS 17, still has a double-digit device usage share, with over 19% of all devices launched in the last four years and overall running iOS 17. Apple mentions that the usage share is "measured by devices that transacted on the App Store on January 21, 2025." We can compare these numbers with iOS 17's usage share from last year when Apple reported "76% of all devices introduced in the last four years use iOS 17" and "66% of all devices use iOS 17." It's worth noting that the previous numbers were based on "devices that transacted on the App Store on February 4, 2024." In other words, iOS 18 has taken a 2% lead despite the numbers being revealed a few weeks earlier. Apple has also shared market share data for iPadOS 18 as well and here are some takeaways: 63% of all devices introduced in the last four years run iPadOS 18. 53% of all devices run iPadOS 18. The numbers show that the market share of iPadOS 18 isn't as high as its iPhone counterpart. Adding to that is the fact that about 28% of all iPads are still running the iPadOS 17 update from 2024. Past numbers suggest that iOS updates usually achieve an adoption rate of about 90% around June every year. So, we'll have to wait see how things unfold for iOS 18 in the coming months. Meanwhile, Apple continues to build new features for its devices, and the iOS 18.3 update is due for a release. In your free time, you can read our detailed guide about 25 small and useful features in the iOS 18 update. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend

Evolution was fueled by endosymbiosis, cellular alliances in which one microbe makes a permanent home inside another. For the first time, biologists made it happen in the lab. Far from being solo operators, most single-celled microbes are in complex relationships. In the ocean, the soil, and your gut, they might battle and eat each other, exchange DNA, compete for nutrients, or feed on one another’s by-products. Sometimes they get even more intimate: One cell might slip inside another and make itself comfortable. If the conditions are just right, it might stay and be welcomed, sparking a relationship that could last for generations—or billions of years. This phenomenon of one cell living inside another, called endosymbiosis, has fueled the evolution of complex life. Examples of endosymbiosis are everywhere. Mitochondria, the energy factories in your cells, were once free-living bacteria. Photosynthetic plants owe their sun-spun sugars to the chloroplast, which was also originally an independent organism. Many insects get essential nutrients from bacteria that live inside them. And last year researchers discovered the “nitroplast,” an endosymbiont that helps some algae process nitrogen. So much of life relies on endosymbiotic relationships, but scientists have struggled to understand how they happen. How does an internalized cell evade digestion? How does it learn to reproduce inside its host? What makes a random merger of two independent organisms into a stable, lasting partnership? Now, for the first time, researchers have watched the opening choreography of this microscopic dance by inducing endosymbiosis in the lab. After injecting bacteria into a fungus—a process that required creative problem-solving (and a bicycle pump)—the researchers managed to spark cooperation without killing the bacteria or the host. Their observations offer a glimpse into the conditions that make it possible for the same thing to happen in the microbial wild. The cells even adjusted to each other faster than anticipated. “To me, this means that organisms want to actually live together, and symbiosis is the norm,” said Vasilis Kokkoris, a mycologist who studies the cell biology of symbiosis at VU University in Amsterdam and wasn’t involved in the new study. “So that’s big, big news for me and for this world.” Early attempts that fell short reveal that most cellular love affairs are unsuccessful. But by understanding how, why, and when organisms accept endosymbionts, researchers can better understand key moments in evolution, and also potentially develop synthetic cells engineered with superpowered endosymbionts. The Cell Wall Breakthrough Julia Vorholt, a microbiologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Switzerland, has long puzzled over the circumstances of endosymbiosis. Researchers in the field theorized that once a bacterium sneaks into a host cell, the relationship teeters between infection and harmony. If the bacterium reproduces too quickly, it risks depleting the host’s resources and triggering an immune response, resulting in the death of the guest, the host, or both. If it reproduces too slowly, it won’t establish itself in the cell. Only in rare cases, they thought, does the bacterium achieve a Goldilocks reproductive rate. Then, to become a true endosymbiont, it must infiltrate its host’s reproductive cycle to hitch a ride to the next generation. Finally, the host’s genome must eventually mutate to accommodate the bacterium—allowing the two to evolve as a unit. “They become addicted to each other,” Vorholt said. To observe the initial steps taken by two microbes as they adjusted to endosymbiotic life, biologists Gabriel Giger and Julia Vorholt re-created a wild endosymbiotic relationship in their lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. Photograph: Thomas Gassler These ideas made logical sense, but no one had ever witnessed the early steps of microbial endosymbiosis. So Vorholt decided to try to make it happen in the lab. Rather than reinventing the endosymbiotic wheel, she thought her team would have its best shot if it re-created a partnership that had already occurred in nature. Rice seedling blight is a disease caused by the toxic by-product of a wild, endosymbiotic affair. At some point in its evolutionary history, the fungus Rhizopus microsporus adopted the bacterium Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica. The bacterial resident produces poison, which the fungus uses to infect rice plants; both partners benefit by absorbing nutrients from the dead and dying plant cells. Over generations, the pair have become so intertwined that now the fungus can’t reproduce without its endosymbiont. However, there is a strain of the fungus that lives without the endosymbiont. Vorholt thought she could use it to re-create the poisonous partnership. Before she got to the harder steps of cellular matchmaking, though, her team had to overcome a basic physical constraint: How do you physically squeeze a bacterium through a fungus’s rigid cell wall? Gabriel Giger, lead author on the paper and Vorholt’s graduate student, started by cooking up a cocktail of enzymes to soften the wall. Then he used an atomic force microscope equipped with a technology known as FluidFM, repurposed to serve as a tiny syringe. When Giger punctured the fungal cell with the microneedle, cytoplasm came rushing out like water from a burst dam. “We had so much backflush,” Giger said. “[The cell fluid] just comes shooting right at you.” He needed something with more oomph to resist the intracellular pressure and push the bacteria in. Giger jury-rigged a connection between his bike pump and the microscope. It worked: The bike pump boosted the pressure and forced the bacteria through the cell wall and into the cytoplasm. After tinkering with different amounts of pressure, they refined the system. “The way they adapted technology to inject the bacteria into fungus is really, really cool,” said Thomas Richards, an evolutionary biologist who studies endosymbiosis at the University of Oxford and wasn’t involved in the study. “They had to use special sharpened needles and then three times the tire pressure of car tires to push that bacteria inside. That represents a big technological step forward.” Giger and Vorholt first injected the fungus with Escherichia coli, a standard bacterial lab organism. Once inside, E. coli reproduced quickly as it fed on nutrients within the cell. The bacteria grew so fast that the fungal immune system noticed them—and handily locked them away for disposal. Then the researchers moved on to M. rhizoxinica, the bacteria already established within other R. microsporus strains. Once inside, it divided at an agreeable rate and evaded the immune response. Most importantly, neither partner died. “It was already super exciting to see that both the fungus and the bacteria grew after injection,” Giger said The bacteria Mycetohabitans rhizoxinica (green fluorescent ovals) move inside a cell of the fungus Rhizopus microsporus. In this video, the bacteria seem like an infection. But as the two organisms reproduce together in successive generations, each will adapt to the other until they find endosymbiotic balance. Video: Thomas Gassler; Nature 635, 415–422 (2024) The pair had initially accepted each other, but that was only the first step. Giger patiently waited, and then he saw what he was looking for under the microscope: The bacteria had wiggled their way into the fungal spores to hitchhike to the next generation. “I had to make sure the signal was the real deal, and you don’t sleep soundly until you know,” he said. “The excitement lasted for quite a while.” Giger and the team hand-selected spores and germinated 10 successive generations of fungi. More bacteria survived in each reproductive round, and the spores got healthier and more efficient. For the first time, researchers watched endosymbiotic and host microbes adapt to each other. “Neither of these organisms is poisoning each other, and their growth rates roughly match this spectrum of viability for both,” Giger recalled. The bacteria survived, protected and fed by the fungus—and the fungus scored a poisonous partner. To confirm the microbial partnership, the lab isolated both parties to analyze their genomes. Already, the fungus genome had gained mutations to accommodate the bacteria. Clearly, these relationships can stabilize quickly, the researchers saw. Soon the two species couldn’t live without each other. Striking the Right Balance By re-creating a natural relationship, Vorholt and Giger have “rerun that tape of evolution,” Richards said, to learn lessons about how endosymbiosis happens. They concluded that the process can’t happen if there is a mismatch between host and endosymbiont at any point in the adaptation process. “That’s probably what happens in nature a lot,” Vorholt said. “Maybe their starting points are successful, but somehow the selection is not there, or there is a cost rather than a benefit. And then you just lose the system, and it doesn’t get stabilized.” Illustration: Kristina Armitage/Quanta Magazine They also learned that in pairings that work, both partners adapt to each other—a phenomenon that has been largely overlooked. It wasn’t just the bacteria adapting to a new environment; the host changed too, even in the early stages. “That is a fundamentally important question that people have ignored,” Richards said. “This opens the doors for real advances.” While illuminating, this bacterium-fungus pairing is only one example of a process that may have a number of mechanisms or conditions. “I can imagine that in protists and other groups that have not been well studied, we will find many new patterns of how symbiosis is supported,” said Laila Partida Martínez, who discovered the rice seedling–blight endosymbiosis and is now director of Cinvestav Irapuato, a plant science research institute in Mexico. More research in a variety of endosymbiotic systems will reveal which conditions apply generally and which are specific to certain pairs. Further down the line, those findings could lead to a new kind of synthetic biology, featuring lab-grown endosymbiotic relationships, which could be a “fascinating avenue to explore biological innovation,” Vorholt said. Instead of editing organisms’ genes to create new traits, labs could engineer bacteria to perform specific functions and then slip them into hosts. “Many new features could be brought together in a symbiotic system by doing this and making them evolve together,” Partida Martínez said. By inducing endosymbiosis, researchers could potentially engineer plants to metabolize pollutants or manufacture medicines. “It will take time to design and to really tune the systems,” she added. “I think our imagination would be actually the limit.” Does that mean we could one day gain chloroplasts and become photosynthetic? Giger thinks it would be difficult for a chloroplast to stabilize inside a mammalian cell. Even if it did work, photosynthesis alone wouldn’t fuel us—our energy demands are too high. “You might get fancy green skin and run a little bit on your own photovoltaics, but the energy gain that you could get from the sun would be minimal,” he said. “You’d go hungry a lot and need to supplement with other staples, such as pizza.” Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences. Source Hope you enjoyed this news post. Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every day for many years. News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ RIP Matrix | Farewell my friend