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Microsoft quietly signaled a course correction: after months of user outcry over promotional content across Windows, the company has begun rolling back some of the most intrusive upgrade prompts while simultaneously continuing to experiment with in-OS promotions like Start menu “recommendations.” Background Windows has been a carrier for promotional content for years, but the scope and visibility of those promotions accelerated around the Windows 10 → Windows 11 transition and the...

If you find Windows Search slow, inconsistent, or more distracting than helpful, Raycast’s Windows beta offers a compelling, keyboard‑first alternative that isn’t just about finding files — it’s about finding things and immediately acting on them, and that shift in mindset is worth a serious look. Overview Raycast arrived on macOS as a polished, keyboard‑centric command palette and has since migrated that model to Windows in a beta that reframes the launcher as an action surface rather than...

Satya Nadella’s plea to “stop calling AI ‘slop’” is less a PR flourish than a strategic reset: the Microsoft CEO is urging a shift from headline-grabbing model demos and mockable outputs toward engineered, instrumented systems that deliver measurable human benefit — even as independent evidence suggests heavy AI use can erode critical thinking in real users. Background / Overview Satya Nadella closed the year with a short blog post on his personal “sn scratchpad” page arguing that the AI...

The start of 2026 has produced an unexpected subplot to the Premier League season: the weekly predictions contest run by BBC Sport — fronted by pundit Chris Sutton — is now being outscored by an artificial intelligence, with Microsoft Copilot Chat topping the leaderboard and taking another weekly win while human forecasters and guest celebrities chase the numbers. Sutton’s good early-season form has stalled in the predictions title race, and for week 20 he faced singer‑songwriter and...

Prestige Master in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 transforms what many players assumed would be a finish line into the gateway for the game’s deepest grind — extending progression from the classic prestige reset into a 56-to-1,000 level ladder with new cosmetics, title challenges, level colors, and long-term goals that will define the next year of competitive and casual play. Background The return of a classic prestige system has been a recurring theme across recent Call of Duty releases, and...

The presence of artificial intelligence in classrooms is no longer a distant prospect; it is actively reshaping how teachers prepare lessons, how administrators run schools, and how students study — sometimes within a single semester. The Daily Observer link provided could not be reached, so this feature synthesizes verifiable, cross-referenced reporting, institutional case studies, and recent surveys to explain how AI is changing our education now, what measurable benefits and risks have...

AFFiNE arrives as a quietly ambitious open‑source alternative to the usual productivity stack — a local‑first, block‑based workspace that merges documents, whiteboards, databases and an AI copilot into a single edgeless canvas, with self‑hosting and cross‑platform clients that make it a realistic replacement for Notion, Miro and several cloud tools at once. Background AFFiNE began as a public, community‑driven project with a clear thesis: combine the structured power of database documents...

Old SD cards are far from worthless — when repurposed thoughtfully they can become tiny rescue drives, portable diagnostic toolkits, offline media libraries, or even experimental operating-system hosts — but getting the most from them requires understanding a few hardware, firmware, and filesystem realities so you don’t accidentally trade convenience for instability or data loss. Background / Overview The idea is simple: instead of letting microSD and full-size SD cards gather dust, put them...

Microsoft’s shelved mobile Windows experiment has resurfaced in a form anyone with a first‑generation Surface Duo and a healthy tolerance for risk can test: an early Andromeda OS build—identified in community packages as “Windows 8828080”—has been packaged and made runnable on the original Surface Duo by community porters, giving the public a rare, hands‑on look at what Windows might have become on pocket devices. Background Microsoft’s internal project known as Andromeda was an ambitious...

Apple is planning a staged MacBook refresh that will extend Apple Silicon’s AI-first momentum into 2026 with an M5-powered MacBook Air line and higher‑end M5 Pro / M5 Max MacBook Pro updates — and industry chatter now includes a separate low‑cost MacBook allegedly aimed at the $599–$699 band. Background / Overview Apple closed out 2025 having pushed Apple Silicon into more product tiers and leaned heavily into on‑device AI as a marketing and engineering priority. The M4 MacBook Air family...

Lenovo’s new ThinkCentre neo 50q QC is a compact 1‑liter mini‑PC built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series silicon, and it represents one of the clearest early attempts to move Snapdragon X laptop-class silicon into a commercial, VESA‑mountable desktop form factor—trading typical x86 throughput for exceptional efficiency, a built‑in NPU for on‑device AI tasks, and a modern I/O package that targets office, kiosk, and light‑creative use cases. Background / Overview The arrival of Snapdragon...

A new AI capability aimed squarely at life‑sciences communications has arrived: AINGENS today announced the MACg AI Scientific Slide Generator, an extension of its Medical Affairs Content Generator (MACg) platform that promises to convert PubMed search results and scientific documents into professional, citation‑correct slide decks in minutes — a workflow designed for medical affairs, clinical research, HEOR, medical writers and scientific communications teams rather than general business...

LG is taking aim at Samsung’s long-running lifestyle TV crown with the new Gallery TV, a Mini‑LED, 4K “art television” that LG will unveil at CES 2026 and which pairs a glare‑reducing matte canvas, magnetic snap‑on bezels and a curated art service called Gallery+ to turn a living‑room wall into a digital gallery. The set arrives in 55‑ and 65‑inch sizes, runs webOS and uses LG’s Alpha 7 AI processor to drive image tuning and picture optimization for both video playback and static artwork...

MSI’s Claw arrives as a confident — if imperfect — reimagining of the Windows handheld: hardware that reads like a gaming laptop shrunk to your palms, a comfortable Xbox‑style grip, and Hall Effect sticks that promise to solve the drift problem that’s haunted other handhelds, but it still carries the familiar tradeoffs of Windows‑on‑a‑tiny‑screen — battery limits, driver variance, and software polish that can make or break the day‑to‑day experience. Background / Overview The MSI Claw is...

Bringing the macOS "Quick Look" experience to Windows has quietly become one of the most useful productivity upgrades power users can add — it converts a routine file-browsing chore into an instant, keyboard-driven glimpse that saves time and mental context switching. Background macOS’s Quick Look has long been a simple, elegant solution: select a file, press the Spacebar, and a lightweight preview appears without launching a full application. Windows has historically offered similar...

Satya Nadella’s short new blog post asking people to “stop calling AI ‘slop’” is less a PR flourish than a strategic pivot: the Microsoft CEO has framed 2026 as a test year in which the industry must move from dazzling demos to dependable systems that deliver measurable, real‑world outcomes. His argument marries product strategy and public policy — urging engineers, customers, and regulators to insist on utility, instrumentation, and governance rather than applause‑driven launches. The plea...

Windows 11’s dark theme has hit another visible milestone: the classic Run dialog and the long-neglected Folder Options panel are now being rendered in Dark mode in recent Insider preview builds, closing a glaring visual inconsistency that has frustrated dark‑theme users for years. This change is rolling out in Dev and Beta channel builds and—because Microsoft is gating the visuals server‑side—some Insiders see it immediately while others must wait; power users can force the visuals today...

Steam’s final Hardware & Software Survey of 2025 produced a decisive pair of storylines that set the tone for PC gaming in 2026: AMD closed significant ground on Intel in the CPU race among Steam users, and Windows 11 expanded its lead over Windows 10 inside Valve’s gamer‑centric sample—movements with immediate implications for builders, developers, and platform strategists. The numbers are not a full market census, but they are a high‑signal snapshot of the gaming population that drives OEM...

Investors with deep pockets moved loudly in Microsoft’s options market on January 2, and the footprint they left is worth more than a headline—it’s a layered signal that demands careful decoding before anyone copies the tape. Benzinga’s options scanner flagged 19 “uncommon” trades in Microsoft (MSFT) on that date, splitting roughly 52% bullish to 10% bearish, with about $1.15 million of call premium and $598k of put premium reported across the prints. Those trades concentrated attention in a...

The idea that video games are a brain-rotting pastime is finally giving way to a more nuanced reality: under the right conditions, video games can measurably improve attention, learning speed, and indicators of brain health — but those benefits depend on game type, practice structure, novelty, and moderation. Background / Overview For two decades neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists have studied whether the fast-paced demands of action and strategy games translate into improved mental...