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Windows 11’s recent update cycle has once again exposed how fragile the hardware–software handshake can be: multiple user reports and vendor advisories show that changes in Windows 11’s Host Memory Buffer (HMB) negotiation and related storage behavior in version 24H2 triggered system instability on a narrow set of NVMe SSDs during sustained, large file transfers—manifesting most commonly as repeated Blue Screens of Death (BSODs) and hangs. Western Digital releases fix for Windows 11 24H2...

Microsoft’s own troubleshooting guidance now lists OneDrive’s background sync as a potential throttle on Windows performance — a frank admission that the convenience of always-on cloud backup can come at the cost of responsiveness on some machines. This weekend’s coverage calling out the company’s guidance has renewed complaints from frustrated users who see File Explorer stutter, high CPU spikes, or longer boot times when OneDrive is actively mirroring large folders. The company’s support...

Arm and Microsoft now say Windows 11 on Arm has reached a tipping point: users are spending the majority of their time in native Arm apps, and the platform’s app story is finally good enough for mainstream productivity use. Background Windows on Arm has been an on-again, off-again story for more than half a decade. Early devices promised long battery life and always‑connected convenience but were hamstrung by a scarcity of native Arm64 apps and by slow, imperfect emulation for legacy x86/x64...

Apple has quietly changed how creators can test its pro apps: the generous, standalone 90‑day trials that let you evaluate Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro without committing are gone in favor of a bundled subscription path — Apple Creator Studio — that offers a shorter free window and folds the apps into a $12.99/month (or $129/year) subscription. This shift is small in a headline sense but large in practice: it reduces the low‑friction ways hobbyists and indie creators trial Apple’s pro tools...

AI agents are no longer an experimental sidebar to enterprise SaaS — they are the new automation fabric being woven into CRM, service desks, HR, finance, and knowledge work, but the shift from suggestion to action brings profound operational, financial, and security demands that every CIO and SaaS product leader must plan for now. Background / Overview AI agents (also called agentic AI or simply agents) are software entities that combine large language models (LLMs), tool connectors, and...

PCMag’s “All About AI” framing arrives at a moment when the PC market is redefining itself around on‑device intelligence, and the result is a new purchasing calculus: raw CPU/GPU numbers still matter, but NPUs, TOPS, and Copilot+ integration now shape which machines deliver genuinely different experiences for productivity, creativity, and privacy-sensitive workflows. Overview PCs have historically evolved in discrete leaps: faster CPUs, integrated GPUs, then powerful discrete graphics for...

A Lahore district court has formally asked the complainant — Punjab Information Minister Uzma Bukhari — and the investigating officer to file replies in a petition challenging the magistrate’s order that handed PTI social‑media activist Falak Javed over to the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) on physical remand, setting the stage for a high‑stakes legal and constitutional contest over remand practice, digital forensic procedure, and the scope of Pakistan’s cyber‑crime laws...

Microsoft has quietly added a device‑wide Settings toggle in Windows 11 that provisions a contained runtime for on‑device AI agents — an “Agent Workspace” and per‑agent accounts — allowing Copilot Actions (and third‑party agents) to perform UI‑level tasks like opening apps, clicking buttons, and operating on files when users explicitly opt in. Background Microsoft announced Copilot Actions and the underlying Agent Workspace in preview for Windows Insiders in mid‑November 2025, positioning...

Microsoft stopped hiding Easter eggs in Windows because the costs — to security, compliance, and customer trust — began to outweigh the nostalgia and developer whimsy that produced those secrets. Background For more than two decades, Easter eggs were a quirky part of software culture: tiny credits pages, hidden minigames, or humorous messages tucked away behind obscure keystrokes. Microsoft shipped some of the most famous examples — the Doom-like "Hall of Tortured Souls" in Excel 95, the...

Microsoft has quietly added native support for .webp images as desktop backgrounds in Windows 11’s latest Beta preview (Build 26220.7653 / KB5074157), while the long-rumored native video-wallpaper capability remains experimental and absent from this particular build — a cautious, incremental change that matters more than its size suggests for both consumers and IT administrators. Background What changed in Build 26220.7653 Microsoft shipped Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7653...

Microsoft stopped quietly tucking playful, undocumented “Easter eggs” into Windows not because developers ran out of whimsy, but because the modern realities of security, enterprise trust, and large-scale software governance make hidden code an unacceptable risk. Background Easter eggs — intentionally hidden messages, credits, animations or small games buried in shipped software — were once a ubiquitous part of software culture. From the early hidden credit rolls in classic Windows releases...

Windows 11’s recent update has been linked to a spate of SSD failures and performance anomalies during large file transfers for a subset of NVMe drives, prompting firmware updates from Western Digital, temporary compatibility holds from Microsoft, and a toolkit of registry and rollback workarounds that every Windows user should understand before attempting another major transfer. Western Digital NVMe SSD users beware: Windows 11 24H2 is causing BSODs unless you tweak your registry)...

Microsoft has quietly added native support for .webp images as desktop backgrounds in the Insider channels, a small but practical tweak that removes a long-standing friction point for users who collect web-sourced wallpapers — while the more eye-catching idea of native video wallpapers remains a work-in-progress, visible only in earlier preview traces and community-enabled builds. Background / Overview The Windows Insider release notes for Build 26220.7653 (Beta Channel) explicitly state...

Matthew McConaughey’s decision to trademark short video and audio clips of himself — including a registered sound mark for the now‑iconic line “Alright, alright, alright” — marks a notable escalation in how public figures are trying to protect their identity from AI‑driven impersonations and deepfakes, and it raises immediate questions about whether trademark law can realistically police an era of synthetic voices and images. Background What McConaughey registered — the basics Over the last...

Oregon has created a new, dual‑mission role — Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) and A.I. Strategist — and has appointed Nik Blosser to lead it, signaling a clear pivot toward centralized privacy governance and strategic AI oversight across state agencies. The appointment, announced by State Chief Information Officer Terrence Woods, installs Oregon’s first executive specifically responsible for shaping data protection policy, workforce AI literacy, and statewide AI strategy as the public sector...

Winslop arrives as a compact, checkbox‑driven answer to a precise user complaint: Microsoft has baked AI into so many visible corners of Windows 11 that a vocal minority of users want a simple, auditable way to roll those changes back — and Winslop promises exactly that while exposing the operational trade‑offs any such tool necessarily carries. view Windows 11’s steady transformation into what Microsoft sometimes markets as an “AI PC” has placed features like Copilot, Recall, AI‑assisted...

Vanguard’s S&P 500 ETF (VOO) and Invesco’s S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) represent two straightforward ways to own broad U.S. large‑cap equity exposure, but they embody materially different philosophies: VOO is a low‑cost, market‑cap‑weighted S&P 500 tracker built for buy‑and‑hold investors, while RSP is a higher‑cost, equal‑weight “smart‑beta” alternative designed to reduce concentration in mega‑caps and tilt toward smaller, value‑like names. This feature compares risks, returns...

Bozhidar Bozhanov, a senior opposition figure and former minister for electronic governance, has publicly warned that a recent Council of Ministers decision to authorise a central public procurement for Microsoft products could lock Bulgaria’s state administration into long‑term technical, fiscal and geopolitical dependencies — risks that go beyond licence renewal and touch the country’s digital sovereignty. Background Bulgaria’s Council of Ministers has reportedly tasked the Minister of...

MSN’s roundup of “The 15 electric cars with the longest range” landed in readers’ feeds this week and — as with every range leaderboard — it has reignited the perennial debate: which EVs actually go the farthest in real life, and how much can you trust on-paper figures? The item the user supplied via the Google News feed mirrors a syndicated gallery that lists the current long‑range EV contenders, but it mixes different test cycles and manufacturer claims in a way that demands closer...

When Windows feels sluggish on an otherwise capable PC, the instinct is to reach for the wallet — a faster SSD, more RAM, a new GPU. Those hardware upgrades help in obvious, measurable ways, but they’re not the only levers you can pull. Six Windows settings — power plans, startup app control, Storage Sense, background app permissions, search/indexing scope, and Delivery Optimization — routinely change perceived system performance more than incremental hardware upgrades. Tweak them carefully...