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Lifewire’s roundup of free on-demand virus scanners is a timely reminder that even the best real‑time antivirus can miss threats — and that portable, one‑off removal tools remain essential for recovering an infected PC or providing a second opinion. The list spotlights utilities you can run only when needed — many portable, many free forever for home use — and includes familiar names such as Malwarebytes, Emsisoft Emergency Kit, Microsoft Safety Scanner, and Norton Power Eraser, among...

When a modern operating system built for multicore CPUs and GPU-accelerated compositing is forced to run in a display mode designed before many readers were born, the result is part engineering curiosity and part living museum exhibit — and that’s exactly what happened when Windows 8.1 was coaxed into working inside a forty-year-old EGA graphics environment. The experiment is entertaining on its face, but it also exposes how far display hardware, driver models, and graphical expectations...

Octos arrives as one of the cleanest, most developer-friendly entries in the live wallpaper scene: an open‑source engine that turns your Windows 10 or 11 desktop into a fully interactive HTML/CSS/JS canvas, ships with an explicit JavaScript API for native features, and is already available as both a Microsoft Store app and a downloadable installer for users who want to sideload. (github.com, apps.microsoft.com) Background Interactive and “live” wallpapers are no longer a niche novelty. The...

Microsoft’s blunt conclusion — that the August Windows 11 cumulative update commonly tracked as KB5063878 is not the cause of reported SSD failures — closes one chapter in a fast-moving controversy but leaves crucial forensic questions unanswered for administrators and power users who handle heavy storage workloads. Microsoft’s service alert states it could not reproduce a platform‑wide failure mode tied to the update and that telemetry did not show an increase in disk failures or file...

If you’ve ever poked around Windows’ innards, you probably stumbled on the Windows Registry — the sprawling hierarchical database that quietly governs countless system behaviors. What many users don’t realize is that the Registry is part museum piece, part power tool: it’s older than most of the people using it today, it contains compatibility-workarounds that were invented for now‑ancient apps, and it still hides practical knobs you can use to change visual themes, file handling, shutdown...

Microsoft’s latest Insider flights have delivered a tightly focused set of features and visual fixes that make this month’s previews worth trying — but they also underscore how Microsoft is rolling out major changes: slowly, gated by hardware and region, and baked into a server-side enablement model that separates code delivery from feature availability. Background Over the second half of August 2025 Microsoft pushed a string of Windows 11 Insider builds across the Canary, Dev, Beta, and...

Windows 11’s monthly updates are essential, but they can also break critical functionality without warning — the August 2025 Patch Tuesday cycle proved that once again, and the fallout shows why every Windows user and IT team needs a tested recovery plan before applying patches. Background / Overview Microsoft delivers monthly cumulative updates to Windows 11 to patch security flaws, improve reliability, and occasionally add features. Those updates are generally benign for the majority of...

Microsoft is retiring the long-neglected Mobile Plans app and shifting eSIM purchase and management workflows to carrier websites and the built-in Windows Settings experience — a quiet but meaningful change that will take effect when the app stops functioning on February 27, 2026, and ushers a new, web-first model for cellular connectivity on Windows laptops and tablets. Background The Mobile Plans app was created as a convenience gateway for Windows devices with cellular radios. Its job was...

MIT’s new AI system, VaxSeer, promises to sharpen the blunt instrument of seasonal influenza vaccine selection by predicting which viral strains will dominate and which vaccine candidates will provide the best antigenic match months before manufacturing decisions must be locked in. Background The influenza vaccine selection process is a high-stakes, time-sensitive exercise. Twice a year the World Health Organization coordinates an international review of surveillance, genetic sequencing, and...

Microsoft set a hard deadline for Windows 10 support — October 14, 2025 — and has offered a narrowly scoped lifeline for holdouts: the consumer Extended Security Updates (ESU) program that extends security-only patches for one additional year, through October 13, 2026. This article explains exactly what that means, who qualifies, how to enroll, the technical and privacy trade‑offs, important gotchas (including a critical August patch you must install), and a practical checklist to protect...

Microsoft and a major controller vendor now say the August 2025 Windows 11 security update is not the smoking gun behind the bursts of SSD disappearances and alleged “bricking” reports that circulated through enthusiast forums — but the incident remains an important warning about fragile cross‑stack interactions in modern PCs and leaves several practical questions unanswered for affected users. Background In mid‑August 2025 Microsoft shipped the combined Servicing Stack Update (SSU) and...

Starting in September, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) will roll out personalized white Beep cards that automatically apply a 50% fare discount for students riding Metro Manila’s MRT‑3, LRT‑1 and LRT‑2 — and the cards will be printed on the spot at station ticket counters once students present a valid school ID. What changed (quick summary) The DOTr announced a new, white personalized Beep card for students that automatically applies the 50% student concession at entry gates...

OpenAI and Microsoft are reconfiguring one of the tech industry's most consequential partnerships into something far more complicated than a simple supplier–customer relationship: what began as close collaboration is now a high-stakes, strategically fraught alliance where deep technical interdependence sits alongside rising commercial rivalry. In August 2025 a flurry of public moves — OpenAI releasing open‑weight models and expanding cloud relationships, Microsoft integrating OpenAI’s...

Anthropic’s abrupt switch to an opt‑out model for training Claude on consumer conversations has forced a long‑overdue reckoning: if you want to keep your chats from being recycled into the next generation of chatbots, you must actively say so — and the same is true for ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini with their respective privacy toggles. This shift exposes a new normal in generative AI: data controls are now table stakes, but defaults, retention windows, and opaque review practices still leave...

The biweekly run of regulatory moves, enforcement actions and market signals between 16–29 August reinforced a clear direction for corporate sustainability: policymakers and consumer regulators are cutting the volume of routine disclosure while sharpening scrutiny on evidence, and technology vendors are answering the call with AI‑assisted reporting tools — but the net result is greater demand for robust data governance, legal proof points and independent assurance. The period delivered...

The software industry is in the middle of a reckoning: long-running growth in complexity, convenience-driven design choices, and economic incentives that reward feature churn have produced a landscape where many projects are bloated, fragile, and hostile to maintenance. A recent opinion roundup highlighted this trend, pointing fingers at cultural causes, popular frameworks, and specific technical catastrophes — and arguing that the first step toward reversing "software enshittification" is...

Microsoft has pushed a targeted Beta‑channel update for Windows Insiders — Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26120.5770 (KB5064089) for devices on the Windows 11, version 24H2 servicing baseline — rolling out a batch of Copilot‑centric productivity features, accessibility enhancements, and a slate of stability fixes that are being staged progressively to testers. Background Windows Insider Beta builds in the 26120 series act as a near‑final proving ground for features Microsoft hopes to ship...

Jagran Josh’s roundup that purports to name “the most-used AI chatbots in 2025” landed in inboxes and social feeds with a punchy list—ChatGPT at the top with a jaw‑dropping 46.59 billion “users,” followed by a clutch of U.S. and China‑based rivals—but a closer look shows the headline numbers don’t survive basic verification and important nuance is missing from the snapshot. This feature article verifies the key claims, cross‑checks them against independent telemetry, and parses what the real...

John Arnett’s column about Officer MJ Byrd — a short, human moment under a park tree that ended with two lost children safely returned — is a small, clear rebuke to the breathless extremes of our AI debate: no matter how capable large language models and other generative systems become, there remain everyday human acts of attention, judgment and care that machines cannot yet replace. Background The last three years have produced a dizzying spotlight on generative AI. Headlines have...

Microsoft has quietly pushed this year’s Windows 11 annual feature update — version 25H2 — into the Release Preview channel, and for most up-to-date PCs the actual work is already done: Microsoft shipped the bulk of the code over the last several months and the public upgrade is simply an enablement package that flips features on. This means the visible upgrade will often feel like a regular Windows Update and — in many cases — will be finished after a single restart. Background / Overview...