Home Assistant follows a monthly release cadence, where the first Wednesday of every month is the release day. However, the Wednesday before that (so, the last Wednesday of every month) sees the release of a beta for testing first. September's update, Home Assistant 2025.9, brings a few changes, but one of the biggest sees big improvements to the creation of automations.

Did you know that Windows comes with a Mobile Plans app? I didn't until just now. From what I can see, Mobile Plans lets you pair up a Windows device to a mobile data carrier and purchase plans for an internet connection on the go.

Microsoft’s AI division announced its first homegrown AI models on Thursday: MAI-Voice-1 AI and MAI-1-preview. The company says its new MAI-Voice-1 speech model can generate a minute’s worth of audio in under one second on just one GPU, while MAI-1-preview “offers a glimpse of future offerings inside Copilot.”Microsoft already uses MA1-Voice-1 to power a couple of its features, including Copilot Daily, which has an AI host recite the day’s top news stories, and to generate podcast-style discussions to help explain topics. You can try MA1-Voice-1 out for yourself on Copilot Labs, where you can enter what you want the AI model to say, as well as change its voice and style of speaking. In addition to this model, Microsoft introduced MAI-1-preview, which it says it trained on around 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. It’s built for users in need of an AI model capable of following instructions and “providing helpful responses to everyday queries.” Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said during an episode of Decoder last year that the company’s internal AI models aren’t focused on enterprise use cases. “My logic is that we have to create something that works extremely well for the consumer and really optimize for our use case,” Suleyman said. “So, we have vast amounts of very predictive and very useful data on the ad side, on consumer telemetry, and so on. My focus is on building models that really work for the consumer companion.”Microsoft AI plans on rolling out MAI-1-preview for certain text use cases in its Copilot AI assistant, which currently relies on OpenAI’s large language models. It has also started publicly testing its MAI-1-preview model on the AI benchmarking platform LMArena.“We have big ambitions for where we go next,” Microsoft AI writes in the blog post. “Not only will we pursue further advances here, but we believe that orchestrating a range of specialized models serving different user intents and use cases will unlock immense value.”

Microsoft has fired two more employees who participated in recent protests against the company’s contracts with the Israeli military and government. The two employees, Nisreen Jaradat and Julius Shan, were fired “in connection” with demonstrations that saw protesters set up encampments at Microsoft’s headquarters, according to Hossam Nasr, an organizer with the No Azure for Apartheid group.Two other Microsoft employees were fired last night for their involvement with a protest that saw members of the group gain access to a company building and live stream themselves inside the office of Microsoft president Brad Smith. Jaradat had previously sent a mass email around Microsoft saying she was “fed up” with the company’s treatment of her as a Palestinian worker, bypassing the company’s restrictions on language around Palestine and Gaza internally in order to do so.The No Azure for Apartheid group has been taking public actions against Microsoft throughout the year. The group interrupted Microsoft executives during live streamed presentations on multiple occasions this spring. More recently, the group attempted to occupy a plaza on Microsoft’s headquarters. After being removed, they returned the next day with tents and tables and poured red paint across a Microsoft sign; 18 people were arrested.Protesters returned again on Tuesday for the demonstration in Smith’s office. Afterward, Smith held a press conference saying that Microsoft is “working every day” to investigate potential misuse of Azure in Israel. But he said the protesters’ actions were “not ok.”Microsoft declined to provide an attributable statement to The Verge.

Microsoft Teams gets a bunch of useful features every month, and what's convenient for users is that the software giant comes out with a list of every new feature it adds. Continuing with that tradition, it has listed all the features it added to Teams in August this year.

The Labor Day sales are upon us, and with them come numerous discounts on high-tech products. If you're on the hunt for a new gaming laptop, Dell has a pretty solid deal on its Alienware 16 Aurora, which comes with a selection of RTX 50 GPUs under the hood.

With Windows 10's support ending in under two months, people have been checking out what's happening over the fence at the Linux residence. What was once an operating system that only nerds used has managed to draw some real star power, including PewDiePie swapping from Windows to Linux Mint. Suddenly, Linux is a viable option for people who don't want to use Windows 11 or keep using Windows 10.

In 2025, buying a pre-built PC isn't lazy anymore — they are toe-to-toe with custom PCs in value, esthetics, and convenience. That said, you still need to do your homework before you spend $1,000–$2,000 on a pre-built gaming PC. Whether it's about the quality and relevance of the components, restrictions on upgradability, or compatibility with your monitor and desk, you need to run through a mental checklist to decide whether your dream pre-built rig is up to snuff.

We've seen good deals on M.2 SSDs before, but this new discount on the Western Digital SN7100 brings it down to its best price yet. You get 2TB of storage, along with great performance as well, making it the perfect storage upgrade for your PC, laptop, gaming console, and more. For a limited time, grab this 2TB SSD from Newegg using coupon code "WDBLKFTN827" which drops it down to just $114.

Persona 5 did a lot of work in getting JRPGs into the hands of Western gamers, but there's another series by the same developers that doesn't receive the same amount of love. We mean the Shin Megami Tensei series, which remains an excellent series, despite not receiving nearly as much overseas love as its Persona counterpart.

With endless tasks, recipes, personal projects, and notes, managing your home can be a tough task. You can always use traditional apps to get the job done. But what if you could take back control and run everything yourself? This is where Docker comes in. By using a handful of powerful and lightweight Docker containers, you can transform a single machine into the brain of your home.

You can’t set your own Calling Card, but you can use them to customize how other contacts appear when they call you. Google’s Phone app is adding “Calling Cards” that let you customize the appearance of contact screens for incoming calls. They’re similar to the Contact Poster feature that iPhone users have had since 2023, allowing Google Phone app users to replace the teeny contact photos that appear when someone is calling you with full-screen images and stylized names.The update is part of Android’s Material 3 Expressive design language overhaul, which Google used to test a revamped Phone app interface in June. Calling Cards started appearing in beta versions of Google’s Contacts and Phone apps earlier this month, but now they’re getting a public release in version v188 of the Phone app. Google says Calling Cards will be available worldwide, and are being rolled out “in phases,” so they might take a while to appear for everyone.When the feature becomes available, Phone app users will see a banner on the Home tab that reads “Introducing calling card: Customize how you see your contact when they call you.” Tapping on this takes users to the Calling Card page, but you can also navigate to it manually in Contacts. From there, Calling Cards can be created for each contact by selecting an image from the device’s camera, gallery, or Google Photos, and choosing a font and color option that will be used to display the contact’s name.Unlike Contact Posters on iOS, you can’t design your own Calling Card that will appear for other contacts when you call them. Google’s Calling Cards only let you set customized screens that are specific to your device, so you’ll have to set these for every individual person if you want to use the feature. Those contacts can’t edit how their Calling card appears on your device, however, so you can have some fun with how you customize them.This is rolling out alongside a new “Take a message” feature for the Phone app that automatically answers and transcribes voicemails when you miss a call. Users can record a custom greeting that callers hear when leaving a voicemail for Take a Message, or select from one of the available greeting presets. Transcripts and voicemail audio can be found in the Phone app Recents tab, and Google says that all messages are “stored privately on your device.” The feature is available on Pixel 4 phones or newer, and on Pixel Watch 2 models or newer when paired with Pixel 6 or more recent Google phone models.