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Microsoft Edge has begun its consumer transition away from Manifest V2 extensions, putting the full version of uBlock Origin on a path to being disabled by default before the end of 2026. Firefox seized on the announcement with a blunt social-media message that its uBlock Origin support “isn’t going anywhere,” a response independently reported by PC Gamer and Windows Central after Microsoft published its August 7 migration timetable. The practical message for Edge users is more important...

Phison CEO K.S. Pua’s warning that NAND flash shortages could last until 2030 should change how PC buyers read SSD pricing: it is a forecast from a company moving aggressively toward enterprise storage, not a confirmed timetable for retail drives. But the near-term evidence is already bad enough for anyone delaying a Windows PC storage upgrade in hopes of a quick return to 2023-era bargains. VideoCardz first reported Pua’s comments from a Taiwanese interview, in which he described DRAM and...

PC Partner Group, the manufacturer behind ZOTAC, INNO3D and Manli, has warned investors that graphics-card prices could keep rising through 2026 as graphics-memory supply remains constrained. But the company’s own published filing does not make the more specific claim that entry-level cards will face especially severe shortages in the second half of the year—a distinction that matters to anyone trying to budget a low-cost gaming PC. Wccftech’s August 16 report, citing VideoCardz, framed the...

Comox Valley public bodies are moving into AI through two very different doors: back-office writing tools and street-level analytics. The clearest operational deployment is in Courtenay, where the city’s Miovision-based Intelligent Intersection Pilot at Cliffe Avenue and 5th Street continuously analyzes traffic activity. The clearest internal governance move is at the Comox Valley Regional District, which, according to The Discourse, adopted an Artificial Intelligence Governance Policy on...

MakeUseOf’s attempt to run Windows 11 on an 8GB Ryzen desktop reaches a defensible conclusion for buyers—8GB leaves too little margin for a modern Windows workload—but its headline framing overstates what Microsoft has actually claimed. Microsoft’s published Windows 11 installation minimum remains 4GB of memory, not an assertion that 8GB delivers a comfortable productivity experience. The company is nevertheless preparing an 8GB configuration of its Surface Laptop for Business 13-inch later...

The MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ is the first Windows 11 gaming handheld to put a credible performance lead over the $999.99 ROG Xbox Ally X on the table—but its $1,799.99 price turns that technical win into a very narrow buying recommendation. XDA Developers reached that conclusion after two weeks comparing MSI’s new Intel-powered machine with Asus’ AMD-based ROG Xbox Ally X, citing substantially higher frame rates in demanding games alongside a larger 8-inch display and improved ergonomics...

Intel says it will keep Raptor Lake processors such as the Core i5-14600K in the channel and work to normalize their erratic supply and pricing, a response to the sharp rise in demand for PCs that can still use DDR4 memory. The important correction to the “Intel brings old chips back” framing is that these 13th- and 14th-generation parts were never formally retired: Intel is responding to an inventory squeeze by sustaining a platform it expected to wind down more quietly. The commitment came...

Intel is positioning Nova Lake as the first appearance of its next CPU core on the desktop, a deliberate contrast with AMD’s Zen 6 rollout through EPYC servers. In an interview first reported by Tom’s Hardware, Robert Hallock, Intel’s vice president and general manager for the enthusiast channel business, said Intel has “a new core” coming to desktop first and invited enthusiasts to “do the math” when comparing that choice with AMD’s server-led Venice launch. The important part is narrower...

Camera Jabber’s August 16, 2026 assessment of the Geekom Mini IT15 correctly identifies a capable Windows 11 mini PC for photo work, but its “99 TOPS” headline needs a sharper reading before it becomes a buying reason. The Core Ultra 9 285H model is a compact 0.46-liter desktop with Intel Arc 140T graphics, dual USB4, Wi‑Fi 7, two HDMI outputs, and support for up to 64GB of DDR5 memory. Independent reviews from Liliputing, TechRadar, and Tom’s Guide support the basic conclusion: it is a...

Microsoft Defender is the sensible default free antivirus for most Windows 11 PCs in August 2026, even though Avast Free Antivirus and AVG AntiVirus Free posted the highest headline score in the latest AV-TEST consumer results. The practical reason is narrower than the scorecard suggests: Defender’s protection result was also perfect, it is already installed and maintained through Windows, and its small performance deficit is unlikely to justify adding a second security vendor for ordinary...

Asia’s most credible challenge to Nvidia is being constrained less by a shortage of chip-design ideas than by the ability to assemble a complete, supportable AI system: leading-edge wafer capacity, high-bandwidth memory, advanced packaging, server integration, software, and a customer willing to run production workloads. Tech in Asia’s reporting on FuriosaAI gets the first part right, but the evidence from the South Korean startup’s 2026 rollout shows that foundry access is only one gate in...

Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line, better known as WMIC, is now absent from the Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2 Release Preview builds issued as KB5120998. The immediate practical consequence is simple: any batch file, deployment step, inventory probe, or support runbook that still invokes wmic.exe needs testing now, before Microsoft completes the tool’s retirement and the remaining Feature on Demand escape hatch disappears. Neowin first highlighted the WMIC note in Windows 11 builds...

Canonical expects Ubuntu installations running through Windows Subsystem for Linux to outnumber native Ubuntu desktop installations within months, according to Jon Seager, the company’s VP of Engineering. The important qualification is that this is a forecast from a Canonical executive, not a published market measurement: Canonical has not released the underlying WSL count, its definition of an active user, or a comparable native-desktop total. The claim surfaced in an April 28 interview...

Supermicro’s fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 results put a hard number on the AI-server buildout: $11.1 billion in quarterly sales, roughly double the prior year, and a 17.5% GAAP gross margin after a 9.9% margin in the preceding quarter. The more consequential figure for enterprise IT buyers is the company’s claim of more than $60 billion in new fourth-quarter orders and record backlog entering fiscal 2027—a signal that server availability, rack integration capacity, networking, power, and...

Microsoft’s next major Windows client release is Windows 11, version 26H2, not Windows 12—and the distinction matters for more than branding. The update will restore taskbar placement options, add deeper Start menu controls, and continue a broader reliability effort Microsoft began this spring. Those are meaningful changes for users and IT departments, but they do not arrive with the kind of platform break, deployment consequence, or hardware transition that normally warrants treating an...

Yes—Apple still supports iTunes on Windows, and its own documentation shows that the program remains available, updateable, and functional in 2026. But iTunes is no longer the one-stop Apple hub it once was. On a current Windows 10 or Windows 11 PC, the answer depends less on the Windows version than on which newer Apple apps are installed. That distinction is missing from BGR’s broad claim that anyone on a Windows 10 build from early 2024 onward “will have to use different apps.” Apple did...

NVIDIA’s DGX Spark is a real answer to a narrow local-AI problem: it gives one compact Linux workstation 128GB of coherent CPU-GPU memory, enough to load models that cannot reside entirely in an RTX 5090’s 32GB of VRAM. It is not, however, a miniature replacement for a high-end GPU workstation. The GB10-based system trades memory capacity and a prebuilt CUDA environment for dramatically lower memory bandwidth, which shows up immediately in single-user inference speed. NVIDIA began shipping...

Sparkle 2.23.0 is now available with a fix that deserves more attention than its UI changes: the Windows debloater says it no longer swallows errors when applying or reverting tweaks. For a tool that runs elevated PowerShell actions against services, registry values, installed apps, DNS settings, and other system configuration, knowing that an operation failed is the minimum requirement for deciding whether a rollback or manual repair is needed. Neowin’s software listing first flagged the...

Windows 11’s original right-click menu can still be restored system-wide for a single user account with one Registry override, despite the modern menu remaining Microsoft’s default interface. Neowin’s newly published walkthrough uses the long-standing {86ca1aa0-34aa-4e8b-a509-50c905bae2a2} CLSID workaround; separate testing published by Pureinfotech in May 2026 confirms that it continues to work on current Windows 11 installations. The practical payoff is simple: File Explorer, the desktop...

Microsoft has refreshed the offline Microsoft Defender package used to service Windows deployment images, bringing the bundled protection stack to platform version 4.18.26070.9, engine version 1.1.26070.7, and security intelligence version 1.455.50.0. For administrators who deploy custom install.wim files or VHD/VHDX images, the update closes the period in which a newly built PC or server is running Defender binaries and signatures that may be months old. The important qualification is that...