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Windows 11 just received a subtle but significant developer-side change that could finally make its long‑promised handoff experience — called Resume or Cross Device Resume (XDR) — useful in the real world: Microsoft has added a new integration path that lets Android apps trigger resume prompts on Windows via the Windows Push Notification Service (WNS), lowering the bar for developers who previously had to integrate with Link to Windows and the Continuity SDK. Background / Overview Cross...

If your File Explorer in Windows 11 feels sluggish when opening folders crowded with documents, photos, or videos, there’s a simple, reversible registry tweak that often delivers a dramatic speed-up — it tells Windows to stop trying to “guess” the best folder view and to treat every folder as a generic folder instead. This advice and the exact steps were recently spotlighted in an operator-level how-to, which walks through creating a FolderType value set to NotSpecified inside the Bags...

Malaysia’s communications regulator has ordered a temporary block on access to Elon Musk’s Grok AI after repeated misuse of the chatbot’s image-creation features to produce obscene, sexualised and non‑consensual images — including material described in multiple reports as involving minors — a move that escalates a global backlash over the governance of multimodal generative AI. Background Grok is a conversational, multimodal assistant developed by xAI and embedded into the social network X...

Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) landed at the National Retail Federation conference as more than a product announcement — it’s a bid to rewrite how digital commerce is orchestrated in an AI-first world, offering an open, modular standard that promises to let specialized AI agents (for discovery, comparison, checkout, and support) work together across retailers, payment providers and assistant platforms without bespoke integrations. Background Over the last two years the industry...

Alphabet’s rerating over the past year — powered by Gemini, a booming Google Cloud, and a willingness to spend at scale — has turned a dependable ad machine into a high‑stakes, capital‑intensive AI play that now demands closer, metric-driven scrutiny from investors and IT decision‑makers. Background / Overview Alphabet Inc. (Class C, ticker GOOG, ISIN US02079K1079) is no longer only the search-and-ads company that most investors learned to trust. Its late‑2024 and 2025 strategy shifted...

Reply S.p.A. has quietly built itself into one of Europe’s most consequential digital transformation engines — not by chasing headlines, but by assembling a modular, product-infused network that turns cloud, AI, IoT and industry-specific platforms into repeatable outcomes for large enterprises. Background / Overview Reply began as a boutique systems integrator and, over three decades, evolved into a decentralized network of highly specialized companies that operate together as a single...

A new trainee-level IT role at Tilbury Ports — advertised through Thurrock Nub News and staffed by Forth Ports — offers a hands-on entry into enterprise IT support with a clear Microsoft-centric focus and real-world exposure to hybrid infrastructure, endpoint management, and port‑scale operational demands. The advertised Trainee IT Support Engineer position combines first‑line helpdesk duties, Active Directory and Microsoft 365 tasks, hands‑on device deployment, and an on‑call rota, giving...

NVIDIA’s driver ecosystem for Windows 10 remains the single most important piece of software you install on a gaming or creative PC: it controls performance, stability, security, and access to features like DLSS, Reflex, and hardware-accelerated capture. This feature explains how to safely download the best NVIDIA drivers for Windows 10, how GeForce Experience (and its successor apps) fit into the workflow, which download channels to trust, and practical, technician-grade steps to install...

A new community release called the "Multiple APO Effect Pack" has re‑ignited a long‑running debate about how Windows applies audio processing: the pack promises to install and activate APO‑style effects across all audio output endpoints on modern PCs, but it also raises significant compatibility and stability questions because it targets the deeply layered, driver‑dependent Windows audio stack and — according to the thread — is compatible only with Windows 11. The idea is powerful: give...

Fawkes arrived as a simple, powerful idea: subtly alter the pixels in the photographs you share so that unauthorized facial-recognition systems learn the wrong version of your face. The tool — built by the SAND Lab at the University of Chicago and released in 2020 — remains available as a free download for Windows, macOS, and Linux, and it still represents one of the clearest, best-documented consumer defenses against mass face-scraping. But the landscape around image AI has changed...

CES 2026 opened with a message that was impossible to miss: AI is the headline — and for PC gamers, the usual center-stage players looked increasingly like supporting acts. Major CES keynotes from AMD, Nvidia and Lenovo were dominated by artificial intelligence language and product positioning, while explicit gaming messaging was notably scarce or sequestered to side presentations. This shift reflects both corporate strategy and real money: data‑center AI workloads are now the most lucrative...

A head‑to‑head test reported by Notebookcheck — based on a hands‑on video from ETA Prime — finds that SteamOS and Windows 11 can match one another at 4K Ultra in modern AAA workloads when run on a high‑end, all‑AMD desktop. The practical takeaway for 2026: Linux‑based gaming has moved from “playable” to competitive in many single‑player scenarios, but the picture remains nuanced — title‑dependent, driver‑sensitive, and shaped by tooling choices such as compositor, shader‑cache behavior, and...

Microsoft’s long-promised answer to Apple’s Handoff — the Windows feature broadly known in marketing as Resume and under the hood as Cross‑Device Resume (XDR) — has taken a quiet but important step toward real-world usefulness: Microsoft just added Windows Push Notification Service (WNS) as a supported integration path for XDR, lowering the barrier for Android apps to trigger resume prompts on Windows. This change converts Resume from a narrowly useful, Microsoft‑centric convenience into a...

Microsoft has quietly handed enterprise IT teams a narrowly scoped but important control: a new Group Policy in the Windows 11 Insider Preview that can uninstall the consumer Microsoft Copilot app for managed users under specific conditions, giving administrators a supported way to clean up provisioned Copilot installs without breaking tenant-managed Microsoft 365 Copilot workflows. Background Microsoft’s Copilot family now spans multiple experiences: a free, consumer-facing Microsoft...

This week’s Value Added Resource roundup highlights a collision of two forces reshaping ecommerce: the rapid rollout of agentic AI as a checkout surface, and a cascade of platform, postal and fraud changes that are forcing small sellers to choose between convenience and control. Merchants report that Amazon’s “Buy For Me” experiments are listing products without consent and causing fulfillment headaches; Microsoft and partners are racing to offer a consent‑forward in‑chat checkout with...

Microsoft’s latest campaign to steer Windows users away from Google Chrome and into Microsoft Edge has become more spectacle than strategy — a cascade of in‑browser prompts, “are you sure?” support pages, and persistent nudges that promise greater security, integrated AI, and a smoother Windows experience, but so far have failed to move the needle on the one metric that matters most: user adoption. The narrative is simple and stark: Microsoft says Edge is safer and better integrated; users...

Microsoft hasn’t said “Windows 12” out loud, but the breadcrumbs are consistent: an AI-first OS experience built around Copilot, a new class of Copilot+ hardware anchored to NPUs, serious progress on Windows on Arm via the Prism emulator, and early moves toward a more modular, serviceable Windows core. These signals — visible in Microsoft’s own Copilot+ messaging, Insider-channel strings, OEM and silicon partner briefings, and hands-on previews — make a clear, defensible set of bets about...

Microsoft's Canary Channel quietly flipping the visible OS label to Windows 11, version 26H1 is the clearest signal yet that Microsoft is separating platform enablement from the familiar consumer feature cadence — and that split has immediate implications for OEMs, enterprises, developers, and anyone tracking the return of Arm‑powered, NPU‑centric Windows devices. Background Microsoft published an official Canary‑channel announcement confirming the arrival of Insider Preview Build 28000 and...

Enterprises reviewing the crowded field of data governance tools in early 2026 face a clear strategic choice: prioritize AI-native velocity, proven regulatory rigor, or cloud-platform alignment — and the current market leaders map to those orientations. Analytics Insight’s roundup places Atlan, Collibra, and Microsoft Purview at the top of enterprise shortlists this year, calling out Atlan for active metadata and speed-to-value, Collibra for deep governance across regulated estates, and...

Google’s NRF keynote punctuated a turning point: the company rolled out the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) and a new Direct Offers ad product, staking a claim that open standards — not single‑vendor lock‑in — should be the plumbing for the emerging age of agentic commerce. Background / Overview The last 18 months have been a rapid sprint from prototype to production for in‑chat and in‑assistant shopping. Large language model (LLM) platforms and commerce partners moved quickly to put...