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Microsoft’s Copilot now has a face — a deliberately non‑human one — as the company rolls out Mico, an animated, color‑shifting avatar that appears in Copilot’s voice mode and is designed to make spoken interactions feel more natural, empathetic, and contextually aware. Mico is the most visible element of Microsoft’s broader Copilot Fall Release, a package of consumer‑facing updates that pairs the avatar with long‑term memory, shared group sessions, a Socratic tutoring mode called Learn Live...

Microsoft is pushing Copilot beyond chat and into the mechanics of work by adding two new conversational, no-code building blocks — App Builder and Workflows — to Microsoft 365 Copilot, plus a lightweight in-pane Copilot Studio that lets knowledge workers create apps, automations and agents from plain English and existing Microsoft 365 content. The rollout is initially limited to tenants in Microsoft’s Frontier preview program and is explicitly positioned as a fast, governed way for...

Dame Emma Thompson’s expletive-laden takedown of AI writing assistants on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert crystallized a frustration many writers and knowledge workers feel: an increasingly insistent, default-on AI that treats the act of finishing a sentence as an invitation to “improve” it. Her short, furious verdict — “intense irritation” followed by a string of blunt commands for the machine to “fuck off” — wasn’t just star-power theatre. It highlighted an important design and policy...

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This week’s 404 Media podcast episode distilled three converging stories that matter to anyone who cares about where we get facts, how we keep Windows PCs secure, and what venture capital is quietly building to reshape the social web: Elon Musk’s new AI encyclopedia Grokipedia and the messy debut that followed, the practical and environmental fallout of Windows 10’s end-of-support and the daily pain of Windows Update, and a16z’s Speedrun accelerator — a program backing startups that automate...

If you play Minecraft Bedrock on a Windows 11 PC, keeping the game updated isn’t optional — it’s essential for cross‑play compatibility, security fixes, and access to new Marketplace content — and the update process is straightforward once you know where to look and what to do when the download stalls. Background / Overview Minecraft Bedrock on Windows ships in a few different packaging and delivery models (Microsoft Store / Xbox App installs, the Minecraft Launcher, and Game Pass...

Microsoft’s latest Insider preview quietly adds a small but practical reliability feature to Windows 11: after an unexpected restart or bugcheck, the operating system can now prompt you at sign‑in to schedule a quick RAM scan that runs automatically on the next reboot, using the built‑in Windows Memory Diagnostic. This “Proactive Memory Diagnostics” flow is rolling out to Insiders in the Dev and Beta channels as part of the KB5067109 preview packages (Dev build 26220.6982 and Beta build...

If your keyboard suddenly misbehaves – keys that repeat, type the wrong characters, or stop responding entirely – the built‑in Keyboard Troubleshooter in Windows 11 and Windows 10 is the fastest first step most users should try. It’s a lightweight diagnostic that checks configuration, drivers, and input services and will automatically apply simple fixes or point you to the next steps when deeper intervention is needed. The tool is easy to run from Settings in both operating systems, but it...

Intel's wireless stacks have quietly shifted under the hood again: a new wave of unified Intel wireless packages — covering both Wi‑Fi and Bluetooth — has been published in mid‑2025 and later refreshed through the summer and autumn, bringing explicit Windows 11 readiness, expanded support for the Intel Wi‑Fi 7 (BE2xx) family, and a set of Bluetooth functional updates that address pairing reliability and modern Bluetooth feature exposure. This update stream is notable because it ties...

Microsoft is adding a simple but pragmatic recovery step to Windows 11: after an unexpected restart caused by a bug check (commonly known as a BSOD), the operating system will offer to schedule a quick, on‑boot Windows Memory Diagnostic scan at the next reboot to look for RAM faults that may have caused the crash. Background Microsoft has been incrementally hardening Windows 11 with a broad set of reliability and security measures — from virtualization‑based protections like Memory...

Finding and fixing a docking station that won’t show up in Windows 11’s Device Manager is a small but essential skill for any modern laptop user — this feature guide lays out a clear, tested workflow to locate your dock, verify it’s recognized, update or reinstall drivers, and escalate safely to firmware and hardware checks when needed. Background Docking stations are a convenient way to expand a laptop’s ports, power, and display capabilities, but they also introduce extra layers of...

FlyOOBE’s latest release quietly changes the rules of engagement for technicians and power users who have been upgrading unsupported Windows 10 PCs to Windows 11: version 1.41 introduces an explicit, operator‑initiated way to skip the app’s CPU compatibility check by removing a single helper file — a small but consequential tweak that makes bypasses easier and more overt, while also spotlighting the persistent tradeoffs of running Windows 11 on hardware Microsoft considers unsupported...

The Snipping Tool built into Windows 11 now gives you quick, native ways to hide or remove personal information from screenshots — from a one‑click “Quick redact” that targets phone numbers and email addresses to a simple ballpoint‑pen scribble for everything else — plus built‑in OCR (Text Actions) that both finds text and lets you redact it before sharing. These additions make it far easier to prepare screenshots for public posting or sensitive conversations without leaving Windows, but...

Microsoft and Apple devices can now play together in a way that many Windows users with iPhones have wanted for years: you can answer calls, send and receive texts, and view phone notifications from Windows 11 using Microsoft’s Phone Link (and the Link to Windows iOS companion), while traditional USB-based backups and media sync remain available through Apple Devices or iTunes on Windows. This article explains how the connection works, verifies the technical requirements and limitations, and...

Microsoft has begun rolling out a rebuilt Start menu for Windows 11 — a single, scrollable app surface with Category, Grid and List views, deeper Phone Link integration, and a set of personalization controls — but for many longtime power users the update is an incremental improvement rather than a cure for the product‑design tradeoffs that drove people to third‑party replacements like Start11, StartAllBack or Open‑Shell. Background Since Windows 11’s launch, the Start menu has been one of...

FlyOOBE’s latest update makes a controversial trade-off: version 1.41 introduces an explicit, user‑actioned way to bypass the CPU compatibility check that previously blocked many upgrades from Windows 10 to Windows 11 — simply remove a helper file (CpuCheckNative.dll) from the app folder and the upgrade path proceeds, but with significant caveats about stability, updates and security. Background FlyOOBE (formerly Flyby11) is a community‑driven tool that automates and simplifies the process...

Microsoft’s redesigned Start menu for Windows 11 has started rolling out to users, bringing a fundamentally different way to reach apps, files, and mobile device content from the desktop — and it’s arriving as part of staged updates via Windows Update and the Windows Insider program. The update replaces the old two-tier app list with a top-level, scrollable “All” section, adds two new browsing modes (Category and Grid), introduces a Phone Link panel inside Start for quicker mobile-to-PC...

Microsoft’s Copilot Mode in Edge promises to turn a familiar web browser into a working, voice-capable assistant that can read your tabs, summarize research, and — with your explicit permission — take multi-step actions on the web; after hands‑on testing and cross‑checking Microsoft’s documentation and independent reporting, the feature set looks promising but uneven: useful for summarization and multi‑tab synthesis today, experimental and brittle for agentic automation, and—critically—a...

Microsoft’s Copilot is taking a decisive step from assistant to builder: two new agent experiences — App Builder and Workflows — are now available inside Microsoft 365 Copilot for customers enrolled in the Frontier preview, letting users generate working apps and automate cross‑service workflows from plain‑English prompts, with an iterative, in‑conversation authoring model that binds generated results to Microsoft 365 data and governance controls. Background Microsoft has been steadily...

Microsoft’s latest Copilot push pushes AI deeper into the Windows desktop: Microsoft 365 Copilot is now embedded inside the new taskbar‑centric People and Files companion apps for Windows 11, with Calendar support scheduled to follow shortly — a change that promises faster discovery and summary workflows for knowledge workers and a rapid operational checklist for IT teams. Background / Overview Microsoft’s strategy over the past two years has been to make Copilot a first‑class productivity...