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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...

Microsoft Defender (formerly “Windows Defender”) remains the default, built‑in antivirus and endpoint suite in Windows 10 and Windows 11 — and while turning it off is straightforward in the short term, modern Windows builds, tamper protections, and enterprise management have made permanent disables brittle, risky, and often unnecessary. This feature examines all supported and unsupported ways people try to disable Defender, what actually happens under the hood, practical step‑by‑step...

Microsoft's update cadence is getting more complicated: a Spring-only Windows 11 release aimed at new Arm silicon is on the horizon, while the Windows tinkering community has doubled down on tools that remove or neutralize Microsoft's growing set of AI features. Both moves highlight a tension that will define 2026 — platform specialization versus user control — and they raise practical questions for consumers, IT pros, and enterprises about compatibility, security, and long-term support...

CES 2026 delivered an unexpectedly bullish week for Windows PCs: Dell quietly reversed a controversial 2025 decision and brought back the XPS badge with fully redesigned XPS 14 and XPS 16 models, Lenovo stole a little of Surface’s spotlight with an ambitious Aura‑branded Yoga AIO and compact Yoga Mini, and HP showed the most literal example of “computing anywhere” by cramming a full Copilot+ PC inside a keyboard. The industry’s mood was tempered by familiar worries — rising RAM costs, uneven...

HP used CES 2026 to announce a broad, tightly coordinated push: make the endpoint the primary execution layer for Microsoft Copilot-era workflows, extend local AI into unexpected form factors, and wrap those endpoints with fleet-grade management, security, and lifecycle transparency. The headline devices — most notably the EliteBoard G1a (a full Windows Copilot+ PC built into a keyboard), new EliteBook and OmniBook lines tuned for high on-device NPU throughput, integrated Copilot...

Shopify is moving to make AI-assisted buying a mainstream channel by opening its merchants to direct checkout inside Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot — a shift that stitches conversational discovery and payment into a single flow and will be governed by a new interoperability layer Shopify and partners call the Universal Commerce Protocol. Background / Overview The online shopping experience has been splintering into discovery moments across search, social and, increasingly...

Shopify and Google have jointly pushed the industry another step toward conversation-first retail by co-developing an open standard—the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)—and by rolling out Shopify’s Agentic Storefronts and catalog upgrades that put merchants directly into AI conversations across Google’s AI Mode, the Gemini app, Microsoft Copilot and other assistants. This move formalizes the plumbing that lets AI agents discover, compare and complete purchases for users using tokenized...

Universal Media Server’s maintenance cadence continues to pay dividends for power users and home-theater hobbyists: version 15.3.0 lands as a focused quality-and‑UX update that sharpens the web player, fixes an important Windows binary-update bug, accelerates scanning by avoiding unsupported files, and adds several small but useful content‑management conveniences — a release that was announced in the project’s news stream and appears to have been distributed to early supporters before wider...

Google’s planned acquisition of cloud‑security specialist Wiz has set off a fresh round of European regulatory and industry pushback, with cloud trade body CISPE warning Brussels that the takeover could create a “multiplier effect” that locks customers into bundled cloud suites and gives Google disproportionate visibility into competitors’ operations. The dispute adds a new chapter to a broader contest over how the EU should police hyperscale cloud markets — and whether merger control...

Microsoft hasn’t said “Windows 12” out loud, but the clues left in Insider builds, OEM messaging, and partner blogs point to an evolutionary — not revolutionary — next major Windows release that centers on Copilot as the operating-system fabric, on-device AI acceleration (NPUs), improved Windows on Arm compatibility via the Prism emulator, and a longer-term move toward a more componentized, modular Windows (sometimes called “Core PC”). Background / Overview Windows’ release model has shifted...

Microsoft’s formal end-of-support for Windows 10 has turned what was already a long-running upgrade debate into a moment of real urgency — and a flurry of steep Windows 11 Pro discounts and third‑party “lifetime” license offers has followed, pitching sub‑$10 keys as a low‑cost bulletproofing strategy for aging PCs. Background Windows 10 reached its official end of support on October 14, 2025, which means Microsoft no longer provides free security updates, feature updates, or routine...

Repurposing an old Android phone into a dedicated PC performance dashboard is one of the most practical ways to extend device life in 2026: with simple software like Pitikapp you can turn any spare handset into a live, touch-capable “sensor panel” for CPU/GPU temps, fan speeds, RAM usage, and frame-rate telemetry — and do it without signing into another cloud service. Background / Overview Turning a retired phone into a single-purpose PC stats monitor checks a lot of boxes users care about...

Microsoft’s next major desktop OS looks less like a dramatic reset and more like a steady, AI-driven evolution — one that stitches Copilot into the shell, leans on dedicated neural hardware, improves Windows on Arm compatibility, and quietly prepares the plumbing for a more modular, serviceable system. The clues are consistent across leaked Insider strings, partner messaging and Microsoft’s own announcements: expect deeper Copilot integration, Copilot+ PCs with NPUs, better ARM parity via...

The late‑December experiment that John Donovan staged — feeding a decades‑long archive about Royal Dutch Shell into multiple public AI assistants and publishing their divergent replies — has quietly become one of the clearest, most practical demonstrations yet of how generative AI reshapes contested corporate history and converts institutional silence into a long‑running reputational problem. Background / Overview For more than three decades the Donovan–Shell dispute has existed in two...

Google has unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard designed to let AI agents carry a customer from discovery through checkout and post‑purchase support without stitching together bespoke integrations for every assistant and merchant. Background The last 18 months have seen commerce shift from page‑centric funnels to conversation‑first experiences where AI agents—embedded in chatbots, search assistants, and platform surfaces—do more than recommend: they can confirm...

Shopify’s latest product pivot places conversational AI — not the storefront — at the center of modern retail, turning chat agents into discovery and checkout surfaces through a set of interoperable standards and partnerships that include Google and Microsoft. The company’s Winter ’26 “Agentic Storefronts” and expanded Shopify Catalog are designed to make merchant inventories machine‑readable for assistants like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and other AI helpers, while tokenized checkout rails...

Shopify’s move to make its merchants broadly discoverable and purchasable inside major AI assistants — including Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot — marks the latest and most consequential phase of what industry players call agentic commerce: AI systems that not only recommend products but can complete purchases without redirecting shoppers to merchant websites. The shift bundles three technical pieces — machine‑readable product catalogs, delegated/tokenized payments, and conversational...

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s blunt framing of Taiwan and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) as the indispensable backbone of the advanced AI chip supply chain cut through months of “reshoring” rhetoric and put a spotlight on a harsh reality: you can subsidize fabs, but you cannot instantly recreate an ecosystem. His comments — delivered in a high-profile interview and echoed across industry appearances — are as much an operational truth as they are a strategic signal to...

Alphabet’s latest rerating is as loud as it is complicated: the stock behind Google, YouTube, Android and the Gemini AI stack is trading like a pure‑play AI winner, but the business remains a mix of a cash‑printing ad engine, a capital‑intensive cloud builder, and speculative optionality (Waymo, hardware). The short version: Alphabet (Class C, GOOG, ISIN US02079K1079) today looks less like a simple “buy-the-brand” blue chip and more like a multi‑headed company you must evaluate on five...

Microsoft’s deadline for Windows 10 support and a wave of opportunistic attacks have combined into a blunt — and expensive — message for users: patch or pay, upgrade or expose your data. A recent promotional push offering heavily discounted Windows 11 Pro keys (reported in multiple deal outlets) has landed alongside repeated security warnings and a short-term Extended Security Updates (ESU) option from Microsoft. The result is a frantic upgrade market aimed at protecting aging PCs, but also...