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Microsoft pushed emergency fixes the week after January’s Patch Tuesday to neutralize two high‑impact regressions that left some Windows 11 PCs either unable to shut down cleanly or unable to authenticate into Remote Desktop sessions, and it also acknowledged a separate Outlook Classic instability that remains under investigation. c Background: what happened and why it mattered Microsoft’s normal January 2026 cumulative updates (the Patch Tuesday wave shipped January 13, 2026) included a...

IBM’s move to bake sovereignty into a software foundation, Apache’s modernization of an in‑memory data platform, and a burst of practical, security‑focused AI tooling dominated this week’s real‑time analytics headlines — developments that matter to Windows‑centric enterprises building low‑latency data pipelines, AI inference stacks, and secure agentic integrations. Background The opening weeks of 2026 show a clear pattern: vendors are shifting from proof‑of‑concept AI features to operational...

Lenovo’s Qira arrives as a bold bet: a system-level, cross-device “personal ambient intelligence” that promises to follow you from phone to PC to wearables, reduce costly context-switching, and intelligently route tasks between on-device NPUs and cloud models so you stay in flow rather than hunting through tabs and files. Background / Overview Lenovo introduced Qira at CES 2026, positioning it not as another standalone chatbot but as a persistent, permissioned layer of intelligence embedded...

Microsoft’s latest public push to expand AI-ready datacenters comes with an explicit promise: the company says it will “pay its own way” so local household electricity bills do not rise as a result of its buildouts, and it pairs that pledge with targets on water, jobs, taxes and community investments that together form a new corporate playbook for hyperscale infrastructure. Background Microsoft launched a public-facing framework — described by the company as a “Community‑First AI...

I walked the CES floor this year feeling a rare kind of optimism — the kind you get when hardware designers, component makers, and OEMs finally line up behind a clear vision for faster, quieter, and genuinely smarter PCs. Then I read the week’s internal memo and comment threads, and that optimism hit a wall: the hardware is remarkable, but Windows 11 feels like a product still at war with its users and its own design principles. That contradiction — excellent hardware meeting an operating...

A new wave of nostalgia hardware is on the way: RetroBox has announced a boxed “VHS Combo TV” that pairs a built‑in VCR with a modern flat panel and a broad selection of legacy inputs, promising to “Binge‑watch like it’s 1999.” The product sketches shown so far mix genuine retro functionality (a full videotape mechanism, composite/S‑Video/component/RF inputs and ATSC support) with modern conveniences (HDMI, digital input handling and a 4:3 display that “emulates” CRT behavior), but the...

Microsoft’s in‑Explorer Copilot experiment has moved from rumor to tangible preview artifacts: hidden UI strings and inert controls in recent Windows Insider builds point to a “Chat with Copilot” entry embedded directly in File Explorer, paired with a “Detach Copilot” affordance that implies a docked, detachable chat pane where users can ask natural‑language questions about selected files. d alongside a conservative, admin‑facing Group Policy that can remove the consumer Copilot app on...

Microsoft’s January update cycle took an unexpected detour this week when a Patch Tuesday release introduced a narrowly scoped but disruptive regression that left some Windows 11 systems unable to shut down or enter hibernation, forcing Microsoft to ship emergency out‑of‑band (OOB) updates on January 17, 2026 to address Remote Desktop authentication failures and the Secure Launch shutdown problem. Background The January 13, 2026 security rollup was distributed across multiple Windows...

Microsoft’s Copilot name has become less a single product and more a crowded brand family — and counting the exact number depends entirely on how you define “a Copilot.” Neowin’s recent breakdown highlights that the company now markets dozens of distinct Copilot experiences (and even more embedded Copilot features), a reality that reflects both Microsoft’s strategic bet on AI everywhere and the resulting confusion for users and IT teams. soft abandoned Cortana as its primary assistant and...

Lenovo’s Qira arrives as a new kind of personal AI: not a standalone chatbot but a system-level, cross-device “personal ambient intelligence” that follows you from phone to PC to future wearables, promises to reduce the costly friction of context switching, and orchestrates when and where AI work runs—on-device or in the cloud—based on intent, privacy, and performance. Overview Lenovo announced Qira at CES 2026 as a unified intelligence that appears as Lenovo Qira on Lenovo products and...

Washington state lawmakers are pushing a focused package of bills this session that would impose new guardrails around generative AI — from mandatory provenance and detection tools for deepfakes to strict protections for minors interacting with AI “companion” chatbots, and new duties on developers and deployers to prevent algorithmic discrimination. rview Washington’s 2026 legislative push follows formal study and recommendation work by the state’s Artificial Intelligence Task Force and a...

Absa’s Kenya unit has quietly listed a mid‑level QRM Engineer role that tells a clear story about how large African banks are reshaping risk technology: they want engineers who can operate at the intersection of legacy treasury modelling and modern cloud/DevOps practices, and they’re prepared to ask for an unusual mix of financial‑domain familiarity and hands‑on infrastructure chops. Overview Absa’s posted role for a QRM Engineer (Kenya) frames the job as part operator, part platform...

A widely deployed January cumulative update for Windows 11 23H2 briefly broke the expected behavior of shutting down and hibernating on a narrowly defined set of machines, causing affected systems to reboot instead of powering off — Microsoft confirmed the regression, published an emergency workaround, and followed with an out‑of‑band remediation within days. Background Microsoft’s January 13, 2026 cumulative update for Windows 11, version 23H2 was shipped as KB5073455 (OS Build 22631.6491)...

Microsoft’s January cumulative update for Windows 11 has produced a narrow but disruptive regression: on some systems configured with System Guard Secure Launch, choosing Shut down or attempting Hibernate can cause the machine to restart instead of powering off, and Microsoft has published interim guidance while engineering works on a permanent fix. Background The issue stems from the Windows 11 cumulative update released as part of the January 13, 2026 Patch Tuesday. That package for...

Matthew McConaughey has quietly moved the fight over AI impersonation from headlines to the federal register: eight trademark applications covering short video clips, audio bites and catchphrases tied to his public persona have been approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a legal strategy intended to give the actor new standing to challenge unauthorized uses of his voice and likeness by generative AI. The move is both defensive and declarative — a bid to draw a legal perimeter...

The quick, punchy headline — that using AI chatbots for daily news is like “injecting severe poison directly into your brain” — may be sensational, but the underlying evidence driving that outrage is real, replicable, and increasingly hard to ignore. Over the last year a string of independent audits, newsroom tests, and at least one medically documented harm have shown that mainstream conversational AIs routinely misattribute, invent, or distort news and advice; when users treat those...

Washington state’s lawmakers have moved from study and warning to concrete statutory proposals that would place new, enforceable guardrails around generative AI — targeting deepfakes, companion chatbots aimed at minors, discriminatory algorithmic decisions, and the state’s own procurement and use of AI systems. Background Washington’s 2024–2026 legislative effort builds on an official Artificial Intelligence Task Force and a string of Governor-requested measures designed to address harms...

Shopify and Google’s joint push around a new open standard — the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) — and Shopify’s concurrent rollout of Agentic Storefronts and an expanded Shopify Catalog mark a decisive moment in the evolution of conversational commerce. The announcements position UCP as the interoperability layer that lets AI assistants discover canonical product records, assemble carts, negotiate offers, and complete delegated, tokenized checkouts inside chat and search surfaces (Gemini...

PCMag’s “All About AI” series distills a messy, fast-moving industry pivot into a practical playbook for buyers, explaining why the new class of AI-capable PCs matters, what the hardware metrics actually mean, and which Windows features are likely to change day-to-day workflows. Background / Overview The PC market is undergoing a definable shift: alongside faster CPUs and more powerful GPUs, manufacturers are adding a third class of silicon — the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) — and vendors...

PC hardware has never looked better — ultra‑thin, long‑lasting laptops, NPUs baked into mainstream SoCs, and GPUs that can produce playable frame rates on reasonable power budgets — yet the software side of the PC, most prominently Windows 11, feels increasingly at odds with that hardware renaissance. Background The contrast is stark: OEMs and silicon makers showcased a procession of exciting devices at CES 2026, from fold-and-roll display concepts to Copilot+ hardware tuned for on‑device...