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Vietnam produced a gritty, physically and emotionally draining performance to beat the United Arab Emirates 3-2 after extra time in the AFC U23 Championship quarter-final, booking a place in the semi-finals and extending a remarkable run of form for the South-East Asian side. The tie—decided by a late extra-time strike from Pham Minh Phuc—was a microcosm of modern U23 tournament football: tactical nuance, high tempo, VAR interventions and a momentum rollercoaster that kept both sets of...

Microsoft has begun rolling out a fundamental redesign of the Windows 11 Start menu that replaces the old two‑pane model with a single, vertically scrollable launcher, new “All apps” presentation modes, tighter Phone Link integration, and a series of adjacent taskbar and reliability changes — a staged, telemetry‑driven rollout that arrives in preview form via KB5067036 and entered broader servicing in the November cumulative (KB5068861). Background Microsoft’s Start menu has been one of the...

Microsoft’s new first‑party Slack → Teams migration tool simplifies moving channels — but it won’t bring over your private chats, leaving Slack direct messages (DMs) and group chats stranded unless you take extra steps. This gap is not a bug so much as an architecture and policy decision: Microsoft’s initial rollout intentionally moves only Slack channel content into Teams, and administrators who assumed a full‑fidelity migration (including one‑to‑one and multi‑party DMs) are now facing...

The Environmental Protection Agency’s recent final rule closing a long‑contested regulatory gap has transformed a local dispute over mobile gas turbines into a national story — and cast fresh doubt on whether xAI’s Memphis Colossus data center operated within the law. The EPA’s January 15, 2026, amendment to the New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for combustion and gas turbines clarifies that large, stationary‑functioning turbines — including portable units used long‑term at data...

Battlegrounds Mobile India can be played on a Windows PC today — but only by running the official mobile build inside an Android emulator or by mirroring your phone — and that choice carries clear trade‑offs between convenience, performance, and account safety. rview Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) is distributed by Krafton as a mobile-first product for Android and iOS. There is no supported, standalone Windows client from Krafton; the publisher maintains the game as a mobile title and...

Chrome OS’s momentum is real — especially in education and low-cost hardware — but the case that it will topple Windows across consumers, enterprises, and power users is far from proven, and Microsoft has clear, defensible advantages that keep it comfortably in the fight for the foreseeable future. Background The debate that BetaNews and other outlets have been having — that Chrome OS presents a credible mass-market alternative to Windows — rests on three converging facts: Google has...

Saudi Arabia’s monarch, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, was admitted to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh on Friday for routine medical examinations and was later discharged after tests described by the Royal Court as “reassuring.” The brief official notice, carried by state media, provided no medical specifics beyond confirming the examinations and his return home — a pattern consistent with how the kingdom frames the health of the custodial monarch. Background King Salman, born...

Morocco’s Soumiya Iraoui added another international medal to her ledger, claiming the bronze in the women’s -52 kg judo event at the Islamic Solidarity Games held in Riyadh, a result that underlines her continued continental dominance and steady presence on the world stage. Background / Overview Soumiya Iraoui has been a fixture of African judo for several years, consistently producing podium results at continental championships and international opens. Her bronze in Riyadh is the latest in...

Prince Mohammed bin Salman received a written message from Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman, delivered in Riyadh by Oman’s ambassador and received on behalf of the Crown Prince by Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed bin Abdulkarim Al‑Khereiji, in a diplomatic exchange that Riyadh framed as a routine but constructive review of bilateral ties and areas for cooperation. Background Saudi Arabia and Oman share a long history of pragmatic, low‑drama diplomacy in the Gulf, shaped by geography...

GeForce owners around the globe began reporting sudden, severe drops in frame rates and worsened frame pacing after installing Microsoft’s October 2025 cumulative update for Windows 11, and NVIDIA responded by issuing an out‑of‑cycle hotfix driver — GeForce Hotfix Display Driver 581.94 — aimed at restoring performance for affected systems. Background Shortly after Microsoft distributed the October 14, 2025 cumulative update catalogued as KB5066835 (rolling affected branches to OS builds...

GeForce users around the globe reported sudden, severe frame‑rate drops after installing Microsoft’s October 2025 cumulative update for Windows 11 (catalogued as KB5066835), prompting NVIDIA to publish an out‑of‑cycle mitigation — GeForce Hotfix Display Driver 581.94 — to restore performance for affected systems. Independent testing and community telemetry showed reproducible slowdowns in certain modern titles (in some test points as large as a one‑third to one‑half reduction in FPS), and...

I ran Microsoft’s built‑in Windows 11 battery health diagnostic the same way the ZDNet columnist did — and the results were quietly useful: a one‑minute, no‑install HTML report that turns vague “battery feels weak” impressions into concrete numbers you can act on. The ZDNet piece shows how a free, OS‑level tool can quickly identify whether poor runtime is caused by settings, an app, or simply a battery that has lost capacity, and it demonstrates that this diagnostic belongs in every Windows...

Apple and Google have quietly formalized a multi‑year collaboration that will see Google’s Gemini models and cloud technology become the backbone for the next generation of Apple Foundation Models, powering a more capable, context‑aware Siri and a wider slate of “Apple Intelligence” features while Apple says inference will remain under its control via Private Cloud Compute. Background Apple introduced the Apple Intelligence umbrella to promise system‑level AI across iPhone, iPad, and Mac — a...

OpenAI will begin placing advertisements inside ChatGPT’s free and low-cost Go tiers in the coming weeks — a strategic pivot that answers an uncomfortable financial reality while also reshaping the competitive landscape for conversational AI, and it makes Microsoft’s Copilot strategy look less like a future threat and more like the current battleground for ad-driven assistants. Background OpenAI’s announcement on January 16, 2026 confirmed what APK leaks and industry sleuthing had long...

If your laptop’s battery life has slipped from a reliable half‑day to a nervous hour-and-a-half, Windows 11 hides a free, fast diagnostic that can tell you whether the problem is software, settings, or simply a tired battery — and running it takes less than a minute. Background Windows includes a built‑in battery reporting tool — invoked with the powercfg utility — that generates a detailed HTML report showing installed battery specs, a history of capacity over time, recent usage, and...

Microsoft’s latest Windows 11 refresh arrives as a pragmatic, low‑friction milestone: the 25H2 update is now rolling out broadly as a compact enablement package that flips on a year’s worth of features quietly shipped in 24H2, while a new wave of community tools — led by Winslop — has emerged to strip out the AI, telemetry, and promotional bits many users find intrusive. The technical truth is simple: 25H2 is more housekeeping and security hardening than a visual reboot, and Winslop is a...

OpenAI’s decision to put advertisements into ChatGPT is no longer a rumor from APK sleuths — it’s now a controlled, public pivot toward ad-supported conversational AI, and the fallout is immediate: users, regulators, and competitors are recalculating what an ad-driven assistant means for privacy, trust, and the future of Microsoft’s Copilot ecosystem. m]) Background OpenAI shipped ChatGPT as an ad-light product in late 2022 and gradually introduced paid tiers to monetize usage. That model...

OpenAI’s new Instant Checkout is moving from experiment to scale: after launching with U.S. Etsy sellers, the feature will soon enable in-chat purchases from more than one million Shopify merchants, a step that crystallizes a shift from “links to actions” in e-commerce and creates a new transactional surface inside conversational AI. Background The Instant Checkout capability lets ChatGPT users confirm and pay for single-item purchases without leaving the chat interface. The feature is built...

Microsoft’s next quarterly report lands on Jan. 28, and everything investors care about—Azure growth, AI monetization, capex guidance, and even the mood of the options tape—could collide in a single, market-moving package. Background / Overview Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) confirmed that it will publish fiscal Q2 2026 results after the market close on Wednesday, January 28, 2026, with a live webcast of the earnings call scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time. This is the anchor date around which...

Connecting your AirPods to a Windows 11 PC is straightforward — but getting reliable stereo music, a usable microphone, and the best codec support requires a few extra checks and sometimes a small trade-off. This feature explains exactly how to pair AirPods with Windows 11, why audio can behave differently than on Apple devices, practical troubleshooting for the most common problems, and the upgrades that eliminate historic limits (LE Audio and driver updates). The instructions below are...