Microsoft has moved C++ into Visual Studio's deepest Copilot tier, adding symbol-aware tools in public preview that let Copilot agent mode refactor and edit large C++ codebases across multiple files, similar to the kind of deep integration long associated with C#

In our popular year-end recap, our hosts are all back tother and joined by guest Josh Yoes to review the biggest React Native developments of 2025! They cover major releases, the shift to the new architecture, React 19 support, and how tooling and performance evolved across the ecosystem.

 

Connect With Us!

• Josh Yoes: @JoshuaYoes
• Jamon Holmgren: @jamonholmgren
• Robin Heinze: @robinheinze
• Mazen Chami: @mazenchami
• React Native Radio: @ReactNativeRdio

 

This episode is brought to you by Infinite Red!

Infinite Red is an expert React Native consultancy located in the USA. With over a decade of React Native experience and deep roots in the React Native community (hosts of Chain React and the React Native Newsletter, core React Native contributors, creators of Ignite and Reactotron, and much, much more), Infinite Red is the best choice for helping you build and deploy your next React Native app.

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Our 8th annual year-end wrap-up is here! We’re featuring 8 listener voicemails, dope Breakmaster Cylinder remixes & our favorite episodes of the year. Thanks for listening! 💚

Join the discussion

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Sponsors:

• Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
• Augment Code – Adam loves “Auggie” – Augment Code’s CLI that brings Augment’s context engine and powerful AI reasoning anywhere your code goes. From building alongside you in the terminal to any part of your development workflow.
• Framer – Design and publish in one place. Get started free at framer.com/design, code CHANGELOG for a free month of Pro. Rules and restrictions may apply.

Featuring:

• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

Andrew Patton’s favs:

• It’s a peccadillo circus (Friends #75)
• Hello, Matworld! (Friends #90)
• Kaizen! Pipely is LIVE (Friends #105)
• The 1000x faster financial database (Interviews #635)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Agentic infra changes everything (Interviews #664)
• Changelog Beats by Breakmaster Cylinder
• Vibing into the vibe (Friends #89)
• Try harder. Ultrathink! (Friends #102)
• Very important agents (Friends #120)

Brett Cannon’s favs:

• The power of the button (Interviews #623)
• The 1000x faster financial database (Interviews #635)
• Build software that lasts! (Interviews #627)
• wsl.exe – cat hello.cs (Friends #95)

Don MacKinnon’s favs:

• Turso is rewriting SQLite in Rust (Interviews #626)

Fernando Bevilacqua’s favs:

• Flowing with agents (Interviews #658)
• Reaching industrial economies of scale (Interviews #632)
• Solving the AI energy crisis (Interviews #652)

Jamie Tanna’s favs:

• npm under siege (what to do about it) (Friends #111)
• There will be bleeps (Friends #113)
• The world of open source metadata (Interviews #665)
• Of agents & agency (Friends #86)
• Over the top auth strategies (Friends #78)
• It’s a peccadillo circus (Friends #75)
• Hello, Matworld! (Friends #90)
• Change my mind (Friends #81)
• DO repeat yourself! (Interviews #666)
• Programming with LLMs (Interviews #629)
• Vibing into the vibe (Friends #89)
• Try harder. Ultrathink! (Friends #102)
• Very important agents (Friends #120)
• Agentic infra changes everything (Interviews #664)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Agent, take the wheel (Interviews #648)

Jarvis Yang’s favs:

• changelog.news
• Minnebar 20

Nabeel Sulieman’s favs:

• Kaizen! Pipely is LIVE (Friends #105)

Jerod’s favs:

• From open source to acquired (Interviews #625)
• Discovering discovery coding(Friends #80)
• #define: I’m going pants (Friends #93)
• LIVE from Denver with Nora Jones! (Interviews #653)
• Inside Oxide (Friends #110)
• Autonomous drone delivery in a Zip (Interviews #670)

Adam’s favs:

• Turn him into a walrus (Friends #87)
• Adventures in babysitting coding agents (Friends #96)
• Chasing that next BIG thing (Interviews #639)
• Inside Oxide (Friends #110)
• Reinventing Python tooling (Interviews #660)
• Werner Vogels predicts the future (Interviews #669)
• LIVE from Denver with Nora Jones! (Interviews #653)
• The state of homelab tech (2025) (Friends #79)

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

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ai.u crew delve into predictions for the future of AI and technology in 2026. The discussion covers anticipated advancements in multimodal AI models, the evolution of hardware devices like AI-powered glasses, and potential regulatory impacts. They explore the practical applications of AI in consumer and enterprise sectors, including the emergence of specialized small models for specific tasks and the potential for AI to significantly disrupt industries such as content creation, customer service, and autonomous driving. The episode also touches on the expected maturation of AI technologies, the role of agents in workflows, and the importance of robust data management. Join the conversation to get insights into the next big trends and challenges in AI.

00:00 Introduction and Hosts

00:39 Predicting the Future: AI in 2026

01:06 Recap of AI Milestones in 2023

01:26 Deep Seek R1 and Its Impact

03:09 OpenAI's GPT-4.5 and Andro's Claude 4

03:57 EU's AI Act and GPT-5

04:39 Microsoft Ignite and Apple Intelligence

05:38 Alexa Plus: A New Voice Experience

08:29 AI Assistants and Smart Home Integration

13:26 2026 Predictions: AI Adoption and Pushback

14:39 Enterprise AI: Tasks and Workflows

26:15 Multimodal Models vs. Smaller Models

34:57 OpenAI's Model Choices and User Preferences

37:06 AI's Dependence on Data Quality

37:50 AI Partnerships and Ecosystem

39:15 AI in Entertainment and Media

42:39 AI's Role in Consumer Devices

46:10 Regulation and the Future of AI

46:58 Predictions for AI in 2026

55:56 AI in the Workplace and Society

01:03:17 Concluding Thoughts and Upcoming Episodes

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aiunprompted.substack.com



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2025 has been a remarkable year for Microsoft Viva Glint and Viva Pulse—made possible by you, our customers. Your partnership, insights, and trust have shaped every step of our journey. Together, we delivered transformative integrations, reached new engagement milestones, and saw meaningful outcomes across the organizations we serve. 

This year, we introduced enhancements that not only strengthened the foundations of continuous listening but helped deliver more robust, actionable insights for organizations by deepening the connection across the Microsoft ecosystem – something we will continue to build upon. Furthermore, these advancements reflect the powerful momentum we can achieve through partnership with our customers.

Starting Strong: No Downtime 

In early 2025, we announced the elimination of planned downtime for Viva Glint updates – a significant reliability win. Traditionally, updates meant 4–8 hours of system unavailability, disrupting survey-taking and reporting. With the new Zero Downtime Release (ZDR) process, updates became transparent, achieving ~99% availability for customers. Glint admins and end users no longer experience maintenance windows – a behind-the-scenes change that vastly improves continuity. 

Admin Self‑Service & Survey Experience Enhancements 

We enhanced admin self‑service to provide program owners with greater flexibility and improved efficiency. Additionally, updates were made to the survey experience to offer more data collection options and support better data quality. Here are some examples of features that were rolled out on the platform in 2025: 

• Ability to manage attributes and hierarchies for more user data schema control. 

• Controls to remove participants from results after cycle close—tightening data relevance. 

• Cycle and user data management improvements, with controls to retain or remove identifiable information responsibly. 

• Role clarity via the Viva Glint Tenant Administrator role in Microsoft Entra (dedicated permissions for admin center tasks and support) and the new Support User role for partners. 

• Custom branding and persistent comment box in Glint surveys to allow for a more bespoke survey experience and encourage the provision of more actionable, insightful data. 

• Pulse survey authoring delegation and large/dynamic audience capabilities introducing greater survey admin flexibility and reach. 

• Identifiable and flexible end-date surveys in Pulse to allow for targeted pulsing and to support rolling data collection. 

• Copilot survey templates available in Pulse, helping organizations measure AI transformation to drive ROI with consistent, research‑backed items with signals from these surveys seamlessly integrating into the Copilot Dashboard. 

Reporting Upgrades 

We took reporting beyond the dashboard and are continuing to focus on export improvements into 2026. We also brought in valuable benchmark comparisons to the platform this year: 

• Team Summary export to editable PowerPoint—moved from static screenshots to fully editable content; widely adopted through private preview and broad availability. 

• Executive Summary export and support for custom PPT templates are both now in private preview and will launch early next year. 

• Global, Industry, Country & Regional benchmark suites are now available for use in the platform for all customers who opt in. 

All About Integrations... 

Glint Notifications & Teams

In early 2025 we expanded Glint’s presence within Microsoft Teams, recognizing that for many managers and employees, Teams is the center of their workday. Now survey notifications, reminders, and nudges can appear directly in Teams chats and as rich adaptive cards, in addition to email. This “flow of work” integration has driven higher participation – customers report improved survey response rates when announcements pop up in Teams, where people are already collaborating. Managers also receive automated nudges via Teams, for instance a gentle reminder to share and discuss their team’s Glint results, or a prompt to follow up on an action plan. By meeting users where they are, we help busy teams close the feedback loop without relying solely on email. 

Glint & Pulse 

2025 also saw the introduction of the new workflow allowing managers to launch a quick Pulse survey as a follow-up after reviewing their Glint engagement results. This closes the loop between less frequent engagement surveys and continuous listening: if Glint results identified, say, work-life balance as a concern, a manager could immediately send a targeted Pulse check-in on that topic to their team. Now organizations are empowered to move from insights to action faster than ever. 

In October 2025, we officially unified Viva Glint and Viva Pulse into a single offering. so that any customer with a Glint license automatically gets Viva Pulse as part of their subscription – at no additional cost. This change, essentially bundling the two products together, was driven by feedback and our belief that strategic engagement surveys (Glint) and agile pulse surveys (Pulse) are complementary tools for a healthy feedback strategy.

Glint & Insights 

This broader Microsoft ecosystem integration has been a running theme, and last month, we achieved a major milestone by bringing Viva Glint data into Viva Insights and vice versa.  

A new Workplace Patterns report in Glint (developed in partnership with the Viva Insights team) allows HR and business leaders to overlay engagement survey results with collaboration metrics from Microsoft 365. For example, you can examine whether teams with consistently long working hours or excessive meeting load also show lower engagement in certain areas – connecting sentiment with behavioral data. Early adopters of this Glint–Insights integration have seen tremendous value. In fact, by the time of general release in Q4, we saw an 18% uptick in Glint-to-Insights data flows and a 32% uptick in Insights-to-Glint usage, as organizations embraced these combined insights to drive action. This integration is a great example of how Microsoft’s employee experience tools come together to provide holistic, data-driven narratives about the world of work.  

This month another extremely valuable analysis for Glint and Insights customers around AI transformation became available: the Copilot Employee Experience Outcomes Report highlights how Copilot usage correlates with stronger employee engagement and well‑being, showing that even small increases in usage can lead to measurable improvements in key experience outcomes. 

Copilot in Glint 

Another integration highlight from 2025 is around the continued investment and development of AI in the Glint platform. Throughout the year, the Glint team partnered with Microsoft 365 Copilot to add new AI capabilities, including expanded localization (70+ Glint-supported languages) so users can interact with Copilot in Glint in their preferred language. We also refined the Copilot experience with key quality improvements and a major model upgrade, delivering clearer, more accurate and faster responses.

2026 will see even more exciting Copilot developments in Glint. Copilot Highlights, a dashboard experience that assembles strengths, opportunities, and engagement trends at a glance, is now in private preview and will become available later next year. 

Streamlining Data Ingress & Egress

In 2025, we began building Glint’s connection to Microsoft’s unified data platform, known as Microsoft Organizational Data Ingestion System (MODIS), and at the end of the year we kicked off our Glint MODIS private preview. MODIS streamlines how organizations bring HRIS data into Microsoft 365, reducing setup time and enabling consistent, secure data flows across Viva and beyond. For Glint, this unlocks faster onboarding, improved data quality, and a foundation for richer cross‑M365 insights. This will become available to all customers later in the year.

Also related to our efforts to streamline data ingress/egress, the Raw Data Exports (RDE) API private preview will launch in 2026. This functionality will give customers more flexible, privacy‑aware access to Glint data for internal analytics and governance.  

Together, MODIS and RDE API represent the next phase of our integrations journey—modernizing data ingestion and export so customers can move from setup to insight even faster. 

Expanding Reach and Trust 

Alongside feature development, the team worked hard to make the products more scalable and accessible to organizations globally. In 2025 we expanded our service footprint with a new Australia Data Center coming online in September to better serve Asia-Pacific customers with in-region data residency. We also achieved Government Community Cloud (GCC-Moderate) compliance for Viva Glint in October, enabling U.S. public sector and regulated industry customers to use Glint in a compliant environment. These investments ensure that we can meet our customer's security, compliance, and performance needs everywhere in the world. 

Behind the scenes, the completion of the LinkedIn Glint to Viva Glint migration was another 2025 achievement. As of publication, 100% of all legacy Glint customers have migrated onto the Viva Glint platform. This was an effort spanning more than two years involving hundreds of customers, and its conclusion means all our customers are now on the latest and most extensible version of Glint, reaping the benefits of all new features. A huge thanks goes to our customers for partnering with us through that transition. With migration largely behind us and a unified platform, we can innovate even faster and serve everyone on a single, modern system. 

Building a Community of Feedback Champions 

A highlight of 2025 has been the growth of our customer community through the Viva Customer Connection Program (VCCP) for Glint and Pulse. This year, over 40 new organizations enrolled in our customer advisory program – adding over 80 individual customer experts (HR leaders, program owners, and IT admins) to co-create with us. Through monthly feedback sessions, early feature previews, and direct line conversations, this community has influenced our roadmap and helped us test new features, integrations and analytics before broad release. Customers who have taken part in these engagement opportunities have had direct influence on many of the wins we celebrated above. We want to thank all our VCCP members for their partnership – your feedback is invaluable. If you aren't a VCCP member yet but are interested in joining to take part in future customer engagements, please fill out this form.

 

And so as 2025 draws to a close, a big thank you to our customers for your trust and feedback that fuel our innovation. The successes of 2025 set a high bar, and we’re excited to build on this foundation. With new features on the horizon (from more Copilot capabilities to deeper analytics and beyond), 2026 is poised to be another leap forward. We remain committed to your success and to our partnership in creating a workplace where every voice drives impact. 

Here’s to the year that was, and to the journey ahead in empowering employee voice and engagement and driving AI transformation! Happy New Year – and thank you for being part of the Viva Glint and Pulse story.