• Microsoft collaborated with the Japanese National Police Agency to tackle Chinese-language cybercrime “app stores”
• The YAM Store, CoGUI, and Iron Man have targeted people in more than 150 countries
• Microsoft is working with law enforcement agencies worldwide to take down illegal operations that target businesses and individuals

Microsoft has announced a successful operation with the Japanese National Police Agency in which a collection of cybercrime app stores were disrupted. Investigating fraudulent, scam messages targeting Japanese businesses and citizens, the operation uncovered a multi-faceted criminal marketplace, with three key elements.

The YAM Store, CoGUI, and Iron Man had targeted 75,000 organizations across more than 150 countries worldwide, sent over one billion malicious communications promoting scams, and generated millions of dollars for the criminals behind them. Furthermore, 750 million messages were aimed at Microsoft’s own customers.

Alongside the Japanese authorities, Cloudflare, Oracle, Proofpoint, Resecurity, and TRM Labs were also involved in the operation.

Impersonation templates

Exploring the cybercrime ecosystem targeting Japanese businesses, investigators found the trio of the YAM Store, CoGUI, and Iron Man. Investigators found these provided a route into a cybercrime ecosystem for cybercriminals.

The environment was providing criminals with pre-fabricated fake websites and messages, designed to be used to fool targets into thinking they were interacting with the genuine article. Amazon was among the faked sites, on sale so scammers could simply host convincing pages to steal login and payment credentials, without any need to hire their own coder. Other spoofs on sale included government agencies, financial institutions, and other well-known companies.

Security filtering software was initially unable to handle the CoGUI phishing-as-a-service (Phaas) framework as it employed some sophisticated methods to avoid detection, including browser fingerprinting and geofencing.

What is interesting to note is the role these facilities played for the distribution of cybercrime assets. CoGUI was apparently targeting Japan and US victims, but during the course of the investigation, was replaced by a new service, Iron Man.

The YAM Store

While all three components were already known to Microsoft and the authorities, it took a concerted effort to infiltrate the network of cybercriminals using the services. They were hosted in a wholly Chinese-language environment, requiring native-speakers to be added to the investigating team, and gain access to the underground cybercrime marketplace known as the YAM Store.

Microsoft assigned a tracking number Storm-3119 to the marketplace, which it describes as an “Initial Access Broker.” It was set up to provide its customers with “compromised or fraudulently obtained environments in providers like Microsoft and Google.”

While it may be expected for compromised software to be on the radar of its publishers, the creator(s) of the YAM Store had a workaround. It was able to keep its inventory fresh by using automation. This identified “expired environment or organization names and leverages legitimate customer information associated with them to help circumvent existing detections.”

Microsoft has seized domains associated with the YAM/CoGUI/Iron Man infrastructure, and either blocked or redirected them.

• Windows 11 is cutting some Copilot features on the right-click menu
• At the same time, a Microsoft exec said that "AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly"
• The exec added that "we're even seeing designers contribute directly to code fixes" and this has caused quite a stir online with anti-AI pushback

Windows 11 is getting tweaked to cut back on Copilot functionality, while at the same time, a Microsoft exec has admitted that the operating system's design team are using AI to help them – which has provoked something of a reaction, as you might expect.

First up, the move to cut back on AI, which as Windows Latest reports consists of stripping out some Copilot options from Windows 11's context menu, the one which pops up when you right-click on a file or folder.

In a post on the Microsoft 365 Message Center, the company explained: "We're retiring the OneDrive Copilot Summarize, Create FAQ, Compare Files, Ask a question, Explain image, Explain images, Compare images, Extract text actions from the File Explorer context menu."

These are Copilot actions which are tied to OneDrive, then, that folks who don't use Microsoft's cloud storage wouldn't have seen anyway.

You can still reach these options using the 'Ask Copilot' icon in the right-click menu, so overall, this is a streamlining change for the better (albeit one that some users won't even realize has happened).

It's not being implemented right away, but from mid-November, and by the end of the year, these options will have disappeared from Windows 11's context menu.

Now for the more controversial development that Windows Latest also noticed, namely a comment from a Microsoft executive on X. Diego Baca, who is VP of Design for Windows, posted in reply to a comment pushing for "Windows design unification" (better consistency) and using AI to help to that end.

Baca observed: "On AI agents, 100% agree. I'm not the best person to speak to the engineering side, but AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly. We're even seeing designers contribute directly to code fixes that improve craft, consistency, and quality. That's exciting progress, and we're only getting started."

The key part of this that's getting picked up on social media is the admission that AI is being used by the Windows 11 design team to ensure tasks are completed more swiftly, and that it's helping designers to contribute code fixes. As you might guess, there are some unhappy people out there due to this admission.

Analysis: a chorus of noticing

As noted, the reaction on Reddit has been predictably full of barbs and withering fire at Microsoft. This upvoted post complains: "We noticed [the use of AI in coding], the rapid decline in quality, every patch bricking at least some devices, major releases bricking entire fleets, and the introduction of major security vulnerabilities that are easily exploitable makes it clear the codebase is being vibecoded with insufficient code review and testing."

In fact, there's quite a chorusing of "we noticed" or "we know" regarding Microsoft turning to AI in coding, as well as the inevitable "slop" accusations, including the likes of: "And this is how Linux goes mainstream, not because it becomes better, but because Microslop becomes unusable thanks to AI integrations." (I should note that as you may have seen, Linux has its own controversies with AI, but that's a whole other story).

At any rate, I think we need to dig down a bit into the meaning of Baca's statement here. When the exec says, "AI has already helped our design team accelerate significantly," it's a pretty broad statement – perhaps referring to assistance on the design brainstorming front more than coding.

Yes, designers may "contribute directly to code fixes" now with the help of AI, but how often is that really happening? I'm guessing not that much, and that this work is more about simple interface tweaks and polish than anything, and this code will be passed to software engineers to be fully checked and reviewed – the main hope being it saves a bit of time. There's a lot of the Windows interface to fix, after all.

I think the hostility here is a bit unfair given that Baca is just trying to be honest about what Microsoft is doing, and I don't think the reality is that Windows 11's interface is suddenly being vibe-coded (by AI) to any great extent. What's happening is that Windows 11 users are jumping on this and venting because they're fed up of too many bugs, and that has nothing to do with the design team.

For me, this is about Microsoft's broader failure with Windows 11 bug testing and flaky updates, which isn't something you can lay at the door of AI as such. Rather, this is about the overall QA (quality assurance) processes which aren't picking up these problems and sorting them out before release (whether any given bug was introduced by AI, or not).

This is what's really the root cause of the outbursts on social media here, and the comments about patches going wrong and general unreliability. And this is what Microsoft really needs to fix, and fast – it remains the biggest problem with Windows 11 that needs addressing.

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella extols virtues of "frontier ecosystem" for AI
• AI can do great things for human workers, but there still needs to be some control
• Microsoft reveals new research showing a divide between bosses and employees over the future of AI in the workplace

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has urged businesses to embrace AI even further to push on and succeed, but urged caution around giving such systems too much control in everyday work tasks.

"When I think about what keeps us grounded every day at Microsoft, it's our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” Nadella told the company’s Frontier Tour London event.

Looking at what he called the "frontier ecosystem", Nadella identified three key pillars which need to be tackled - including recapturing individual empowerment, as although AI is taking charge of the dullest parts of our jobs, there is still need for a human to have control.

Frontier AI

Nadella also highlighted "the reverse information paradox" - with a digital learning system which is constantly improving itself, the challenge is for organisations to "capture that knowledge and keep it locally to yourself...in other words, you have to own the knowledge that gets created, both with the human capital that you have, as well as the token capital that you generate"

The final challenge concerns trust, as Nadella noted, “our scaling laws are producing even more powerful models that are less and less trustworthy…you need to treat these models as new forms of insiders, and create a zero-trust architecture around it.”

The speech came as Microsoft unveiled new research revealing something of a divide between bosses and employees over the future of AI in the workplace.

It found the vast majority (84%) of business leaders believe the UK can become a world-leading AI economy within five years, compared with just 41% of employees.

But it also noted that workers are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact on jobs and opportunities for young people, with over half (57%) of employees using AI at work afraid it will reduce opportunities for young people, while 35% fear for their own job security.

For bosses, the future was a bit brighter, with 90% of leaders claiming they had a clear AI strategy in their business, while 84% of those in organisations already adopting AI say they’ve already experienced moderate or significant changes to how their work gets done.

“Bending the curve changes what the UK can achieve, increasing productivity, business growth, better public services, and the measure of that progress is the difference that people feel in their everyday lives,” noted Darren Hardman, Microsoft UK CEO.

“We will not bend the curve unless people see a place for themselves in what comes next…the question is no longer whether you have a strategy, it’s whether AI is actually changing how work gets done.”

“For organizations here, the challenge is to turn AI's potential into improvements that people can feel in the work they do, the services they use, and the opportunities that are open to them...our role at Microsoft to bring intelligence and trust together in AI that puts your organization's knowledge to work helping people achieve more while providing the safeguards and visibility to stay in control.”

• Microsoft unveils Guardian Agents to monitor, constrain, and manage risks posed by autonomous AI agents
• New controls dynamically adjust agent permissions, behavior, and access based on changing risk levels
• Company warns “agentic insiders” require continuous AI-driven oversight beyond traditional security controls

AI fans, your vocabulary is about to become two phrases richer: Agentic Insider, and Guardian Agent. These are the two phrases Microsoft used while announcing a swathe of new tools and features to help businesses secure their operations running AI agents.

A new Microsoft blog, published by Microsoft's Corporate VP for Identity and Network Access, Nadim Abdo, argues that agents, while not inherently malicious, can make mistakes or be manipulated and compromised.

Since they need to be granted relatively extensive permissions in order to be able to work properly, it creates the sort of risk that can prove disastrous if not properly handled.

Agentic Overwatch

Abdo also added that AI agents doing their master's bidding cannot be trusted with their own security.

"Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, recently described the trust architecture this new era requires: we must separate the supply of intelligence from the authority over it," Abdo writes.

"We should not ask a model to be its own security authority. The controls that determine what it can access, what actions it can take, and whether it should continue operating must sit outside the model, where the model cannot bypass or tamper with them."

So, oversight is the keyword here. But AI agents move at machine speed, something no human can match, and therefore humans are not properly equipped for the job. Instead, separate AI agents need to be introduced to keep their juniors in check. Earlier, Microsoft introduced Project Perception and the Microsoft cyber stack, to help organizations defend with agents.

Project Perception is an AI-powered cybersecurity system designed to coordinate specialized AI agents that analyze security data, identify vulnerabilities, and investigate different threats. The system uses three types of agents: red agents that probe for weaknesses, blue agents that investigate potential threats, and green agents that implement corrections and fixes.

Now, Microsoft says it is extending the project to secure “the agentic insider”. They’re calling it - Guardian Agent.

“Guardian Agents help security teams operate continuously, at machine speed and scale, while sensors, context, and actuators across the cyber stack help understand changing agent risk and continuously adapt protection in response,” Abdo explained. “Project Perception and Microsoft Agent 365 share signals, context, and a unified registry giving IT and security teams a consistent view of agents and risk, with the controls each needs.”

Drill sergeant

Abdo says Guardian Agents build on a security principle where non-deterministic intelligence needs to be surrounded with deterministic controls, independent evidence, and containment boundaries.

These controls are divided into seven aspects - identity, permissions, data, endpoints, network, cloud, and runtime - and these have four responsibilities: to know which agent exists, who owns them and why, and what they’re doing; to contain what each agents can access and do before it acts; to protect the data, tools, runtime, resources, and systems the agent uses; and to adapt protection continuously as behavior, context, and risk change.

In other words, the AI needs to be the drill sergeant for the drones, adapting to changes in real-time to make sure they’re doing good work and not going rogue.

Microsoft also said it is expanding discovery to 35 additional types of local agents, including Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, and GitHub Copilot. It also announced extending Microsoft Entra Agent ID with identity types for additional agent patterns, including both local and previously unknown agents discovered through security sensors.

With “Dynamic Permissions” and “Dynamic Agent Risk”, Microsoft wants to give businesses tighter control over what AI agents can access and do, while keeping tabs on their behavior and risk levels. Dynamic Permissions limit agents to the access they need for a specific task, while Dynamic Agent Risk checks for potential threats.

Dynamic Conditional Access can then respond to rising risks by restricting permissions, blocking certain operations, or asking for human approval. In more extreme scenarios, an agent can be stopped and isolated.

• The Bing Wallpaper app has seen an annoying feature reintroduced
• This means those clicking on a blank space of the Windows 11 desktop will get a Bing search fired up in their default browser
• Unlike the last time Microsoft tried this stunt, there's no way to disable the ability this time around

Microsoft is up to its old tricks again, except even worse this time — with a scheme whereby Windows 11 users with the Bing Wallpaper app installed are sent to its search engine with a mere stray click on the desktop.

Windows Latest reports that an old, potentially off-putting shortcut has been reintroduced to the Bing Wallpaper app, whereby if you click anywhere on the Windows 11 desktop, a search in the (separate) Bing engine is fired up (in your default web browser).

If you recall, this actually happened a year ago, but Microsoft reversed course, although now appears to be trying to reintroduce this feature. The difference is that this time around, Windows Latest notes that there's no option to turn off the functionality (which was present last year, in the app's settings).

However, there are some points to note here: firstly that you must choose to install the Bing Wallpaper app (which cycles Bing images daily for your desktop background). It's not a default Windows 11 app, so this isn't something Microsoft is piping directly to Windows users.

Secondly, the Bing search doesn't trigger every time you click on a blank piece of desktop (a space without a file, folder or icon). It does this once, and then the Bing search won't be triggered for another 24 hours. You'll only experience this once per day, in other words.

Analysis: Microsoft must do better

Just because this app isn't part of Windows 11 by default doesn't give Microsoft the excuse to push functionality like this. It's just going to annoy or even confuse people if they accidentally click the desktop and end up with a Bing search being loaded.

The search relates to the wallpaper image, in case you're curious, and fair enough – maybe some folks might be inquisitive and actually want to know more about the picture by clicking on it.

However, this should be an ability that's optional and can be turned on, not something that's enabled by default. What's worse still is that in this new incarnation of the click-to-Bing farce, you can't even turn it off if you want to do so.

Why is Microsoft engaging with this kind of nonsense to promote its own services? I really can't begin to guess given that 2026 is the year of fixing Windows 11 and curing all the ills around the OS, and while this app may not be part of the operating system, it's still a piece of official Microsoft software – and there shouldn't be any place for this cynical Bing traffic grab or any other remotely anti-consumer practices.

Whether it's a part of Windows by default, or not – or whether you have to be 'foolish' to install the Bing Wallpaper app, as some online commenters argue – is besides the point. Microsoft is supposed to be better than this now, but another episode with a recent Harry Potter advert in this Bing app – one that provoked a considerable rebellion – suggests that it very much needs to try harder.

• Microsoft pulls out of the UK's largest data center project over concerns surrounding power supply
• The site was expected to be hooked up to the grid by 2027, but new estimates suggest it will not be operational until early 2030
• Microsoft was the site's only publicly announced customer

Microsoft has announced it will pull out of a project the UK government had previously dubbed the country’s largest AI data center.

A backlog of power capacity for UK data centers means the site would not be operational until the early 2030s, prompting Microsoft’s withdrawal from the project.

The development, announced in 2025 and headed by British company Nscale, was set to be built at a site in Loughton, Essex - but the project has been mired in controversy after it was revealed in March 2026 that the site was still operating as a scaffolding yard.

Nscale data center in limbo

The data center was originally planned to be hooked up to the grid by 2027, but the UK currently does not have enough energy capacity for the more than 300 data centers still looking to connect to the energy grid. Capacity is stretched so thin that the total electricity demand for data centers is currently 60% greater than current capacity.

Microsoft’s investment was a linchpin for the site with the company planning to fund a supercomputer and act as a key customer once the data center was operational. However, the withdrawal of Nscale’s only publicly announced customer has left the site in limbo.

“We remain committed to both the Loughton project and the UK and we are exploring alternative power sources for the site, in addition to other expansion sites in the UK,” Nscale said in a statement. “Our relationship with Microsoft remains strong and long-term.”

“This unfortunate London-wide grid issue has no impact on our other contracts,” the company added.

Britain’s ‘sovereign’ data center provider

Nscale has positioned itself as Britain’s “sovereign” data center provider and was planning to head to Wall Street with an estimated valuation of $35 billion (£26billion). The company is a neocloud - operating with significant backing from Nvidia - looking to build the underlying infrastructure that will power the AI boom.

But there are concerns that neoclouds and other data center developers could be an instability in the AI ecosystem. Some experts have theorized that AI will need to offer a global revenue of $2.5 trillion annually in order to deliver on the underlying investments made in infrastructure and hardware.

Current estimates suggest the yearly AI revenue sits between just $150 billion and $250 billion.

Developers are taking on increasingly risky debts to lay the foundation for the expected AI boom in the hope that losses can be recovered once productivity gains are fully realized, but as previous revolutionary tech cycles have demonstrated, it is the companies that build upon the underlying infrastructure succeed, but those building it often struggle to recuperate their investments.

• Windows 11 has a new preview build with a change to boost performance
• It's just for Edge to begin with, and it means that if the browser is already running, new instances of the app will launch faster
• Microsoft's plan is to introduce this to a wider range of Windows 11 apps

Microsoft is making another move to tune up Windows 11 so it launches some apps more swiftly, although this is just in testing for now.

Windows Latest noticed that the latest build in the Release Preview channel (the final stage of testing) applies a change to bring in "accelerated app launches" for Microsoft Edge in a certain scenario. Namely that when Edge is already running, further instances of the web browser being opened will appear at a faster speed.

Microsoft tells us that: "When you select a link or open Edge from the taskbar or Start menu while Edge is already running in the background, Windows now routes your request directly to the running instance instead of first starting an extra, temporary process."

This shortened launch path for when Edge is 'warm' (already running) means a considerably faster launch time, as Windows Latest verified.

The tech site also points out that only the first 'cold' start of the browser will be slower (with the longer launch process), as even if you open Edge, then close it, if you run the app again, it's still 'warm' as the relevant processes have spun up in the background.

Analysis: broader benefits, but why did all this take so long?

If you don't use Edge (and that's doubtless most of you), then you might be thinking: what's the big deal anyway? Well, this is a first step in testing towards a grander goal, namely a "broader Windows capability that any app can adopt to speed up its own launches" as Microsoft explains in the preview build's release notes.

Eventually, we could see multiple apps benefiting from what's an apparently considerable performance boost when launching, assuming that they're already running (and warmed up). It could be some time before Microsoft opens this up to third-party developers, mind, and then they have to get around to implementing the functionality.

At any rate, it's a useful new feature, and one that comes on top of Microsoft's existing work in enabling preloading for certain Windows 11 apps, notably Edge itself and File Explorer. We've also witnessed the introduction of the Low Latency Profile feature, which represents a nice CPU speed boost for Windows 11's menus and also apps.

The main question is: why did it take Microsoft so long to get around to these performance improvements? File Explorer being slow was a complaint from the start with Windows 11, and yet we've had to suffer this – and various other instances of sluggishness – for years before they've been fixed. It was only this year, when Microsoft properly turned its attention to fixing Windows 11, that we've seen solutions flooding forth.

And don't get me wrong, that's great, but it also shows that Microsoft didn't take these performance problems seriously until the Windows 11 userbase was more or less in open rebellion over AI features being pushed while all these issues continued to frustrate people. It's clear enough that the optimization of Windows 11 could have been done in the past, if Microsoft was willing to graft at the task, it was just that the company didn't see it as enough of a priority – bafflingly.

I concede that even when Microsoft is doing a good thing here, I'm moaning, and that in this respect the company can't win. Fair enough, and all's well that ends well as they say, but what I'm really hoping is that Microsoft can learn from this in the future and act earlier to troubleshoot its desktop OS when it clearly has problems.

Whatever next-gen Windows turns out to be, it needs to take this new attitude and go forward with it, until Microsoft has an operating system which is running smoothly for daily operations in every important respect, from performance to usability – not to mention reliability and stable updates which is still a big issue that's left to resolve.

• CMA investigation finds that Microsoft has "a strong position" across five separate areas
• An ongoing investigation is also considering whether Copilot has an advantage
• Microsoft could have to make changes to licensing and improve interoperability

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is proposing to give Microsoft a Strategic Market Status (SMS) designation in the business software market as a result of an earlier investigation into its software practices and impact on competition.

Core to the investigation was the company's extensive software ecosystem, which customers reportedly find difficult to leave to switch providers.

According to the data, around 20 million people use Microsoft's software in the UK every month, including private businesses and public sector organizations.

CMA proposes labelling Microsoft with SMS in the UK

"Microsoft has a strong position across each of the 5 areas of digital activity that the CMA investigated," the CMA wrote. Those five areas include operating systems, productivity software, security software, server operating systems and database management systems.

The report slates Microsoft for using barriers to prevent customers from switching as well as other "commercial practices and integration advantages" that keep users tied to the broader ecosystem.

If Microsoft is deemed to have Strategic Market Status, the CMA would likely want the company to make a series of changes, including changes to its bundling and licensing practices. The Authority would also likely want to see improvements to interoperability so that customers could mix and match software.

Copilot is another integral part to the investigation, and the CMA is working to determine whether Microsoft's existing market power could also give an unfair advantage in favor of its Copilot AI.

"Organisations should be able to choose the products that work best for them, switch provider when they want to and combine services from different suppliers," CMA CEO Sarah Cardell wrote.

The CMA has also been working with Microsoft outside of the formal designation process to reach a resolution.

"All our products - including Copilot - are open and interoperable, giving customers the ability to use them alongside competing services and choose solutions that work best for them at attractive prices," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

"We will continue engaging constructively to ensure UK customers and businesses carry on benefiting from robust competition."

• Brad Smith hits back at Trump administration's decision to target Microsoft
• Five out of six tech/science medal holders were born outside of the US
• "We should all be worried," Smith says

Microsoft President Brad Smith has warned that new restrictions under the Trump administration could severely damage America's technology industry by limiting its access to skilled migrants.

Speaking with Politico, Smith criticized the administration's decision to restrict Microsoft's ability to sponsor skilled foreign employees for permanent US residency under the green card scheme.

By discouraging workers from moving to America, Smith worries that they could be incentivized to move to other countries, both losing America access to skilled professionals while simultaneously boosting other countries' access.

Smith hits back at Trump administration to limit green card

Microsoft's President's comments come in a response to US Vice President JD Vance's October 8 2026 memo declaring that Microsoft and seven other companies would be suspended from sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency.

"Our message to Microsoft is, you’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers," Vance said (via The Guardian). "You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants."

Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Capgemini, Tata, Wipro and HCL are also impacted by the changes.

"I think we should all be worried about sending – intentionally or inadvertently or otherwise – signals that send the most talented next wave of AI [or] SI software engineers to other countries, rather than the United States," Smith said.

Smith also criticized the Trump administration for failing to get the numbers right about its green card applications, calling Vance's comments "completely off base" and slating the government because "the green card backlog is so long."

"We should consider the fact that when the president honored six Americans with these technology and science medals, five of the six had come to the United States as immigrants," he added.

The next steps continue to play out, but legal challenges and international worker uncertainty could both be on the cards.

• Windows 11 is now 'up to 20% more responsive,' Microsoft tells us, based on benchmarking typical interface workloads
• Apparently, this performance honing 'can make an especially meaningful difference on PCs with 8GB of memory'
• A new Photos app is also out, which is a good deal speedier, alongside changes for Windows 11's Gallery and photo viewer

Microsoft has underlined how it's making Windows 11 faster and ensuring the OS uses system RAM more optimally, while also introducing a new and more performant Photos app.

In a blog post, Microsoft explained how it's been tinkering with Windows 11 to make it run faster, and that: "The result is a Windows experience that's up to 20% more responsive, with improvements you can feel as soon as you boot into your PC."

That 20% figure is quite vague, but Microsoft says it's based on measured speed increases in Windows 11 search, the right-click menu, Settings, Start menu, as well as File Explorer (the folders on the desktop) and the Snipping Tool.

These are performance boosts seen in the most recent October update for Windows 11 (well, they were tested in the September preview update, but it's the same thing) compared to the OS as it stood at the beginning of 2026. Naturally, performance will vary by device and configuration, but the gist is clear: there's a sizeable speed boost.

Microsoft observes that a big part of this nippier performance lies in better use of system resources and RAM, with improvements in memory management and efficiency.

The software giant notes: "That work can make an especially meaningful difference on PCs with 8GB of memory. Windows can now keep up to 2GB more of your active data in memory instead of moving it to slower storage, helping your PC stay responsive as you open more apps or browser tabs."

We're also told that Windows 11's background RAM use is being trimmed back, so on PCs with only 8GB of memory (or less), widgets load only when opened, reducing background workload by 200 MB.

In this blog post, Microsoft also reminds us of all the work it's done to fix Windows 11. From key interface changes for the likes of the Start menu and taskbar, through to improving Windows updates, we've also witnessed recent changes that make search faster, more accurate, and useful (and more efficient with RAM usage).

There's an entirely fresh revelation here, though, in the form of the new Photos app as mentioned at the outset.

Microsoft says it rebuilt the native Photo editor around WinUI 3 (the modern interface framework for Windows 11), and it now launches 25% faster than before. It sports a reorganized set of menus and features, including repair (unwanted object removal) and relight (to swiftly adjust the lighting of a photo).

The Photo viewer also launches faster (by about 15% on average, Microsoft claims), opens photos up to 30% faster, and has a cleaner, more streamlined design, so you see more of the picture.

It also adds a new Gallery that brings together photos on your PC and in the cloud (OneDrive and Apple iCloud). Again, expect faster launch times, more responsive scrolling, and natural-language search, so you can ask for 'pictures of my dog on the beach,' and Windows will find them (hopefully).

Analysis: progress in the right direction

Microsoft previously promised to work hard on memory optimization for Windows 11, and it's presenting clear evidence of that here, which is good to see. As I've said before, though, it's a puzzle why Microsoft hasn't done this before now, and you've got to wonder why, for example, widgets were ever allowed to eat up memory if they're not being used.

At any rate, this is useful progress, and there's a very handy bunch of enhancements for the Photos app, too, along with the associated Viewer and Gallery, with impressive performance improvements therein.

Microsoft is crystal clear about there being significant speed-ups present in Windows 11 all-round with the latest update for the OS, although we're yet to see any commentary from users who are noticing this. Admittedly, the October update has only been out for a couple of days, so it'll be interesting to watch the ongoing reaction.

Overall, this seems like continued progress in the right direction, and we can expect more performance tuning before 2026 is out.

Microsoft has released a minor Windows update to address connection issues with Always On VPN, with users reporting other fixes as a seemingly unintended consequence.

As Bleeping Computer reports, users reported connection issues with Microsoft’s Always On VPN standard following a Windows update in September 2026. The tech titan has released the KB 5127646 and KB5127648 cumulative updates in order to address the problem.

Always On VPN is a connection standard built into Windows 10, Windows 11, and Windows Server that lets VPNs activate as soon as a user’s computer detects an active internet connection. It’s the underlying technology that allows some of the best VPNs to offer automatic connections on Windows computers.

In an alert shared with IT administrators in September 2026 (via Bleeping Computer), Microsoft acknowledged a bug that caused Always On VPN to fail if the computer couldn’t establish an initial internet connection.

The alert noted that repeated connection attempts could display an error reading “The specified port is already in use”, suggesting that Windows hadn’t been able to recognise a failed connection. The issue affected computers and servers running Windows 11 24H2 or newer.

Naturally, this was a problem for users and organisations who leave their VPN to activate automatically by default. And, though such failures could generate error messages, it’s possible that this bug could’ve left users unprotected against malicious tracking or data harvesting, a particular concern for large organisations.

Microsoft has also given details of a temporary fix for users and organisations that are unable to install the cumulative updates that correct this issue: “IT administrators can mitigate this issue by changing the Always On VPN profile from automatic protocol selection to a single protocol, either SSTP only or IKEv2 only, depending on their environment and configuration.”

Redditor reports a bonus fix – but others report new issues

According to user reports, it seems that Microsoft’s Always On VPN patch has improved other VPN connections, though it's unclear whether this was intentional or an unintended bonus.

Reddit user Canada_Ottawa shared that their Surfshark connection had improved in both speed and stability overnight after installing the MS Tuesday, 2026 10 13 Windows 11 update.

The user said that their VPN connection had been unstable for “about two months” prior to this patch, especially when waking their computer from Sleep mode.

On the flip side, other online users have shared their frustration at new issues arising with the most recent Windows patch.

User ephycalyptus said that they could no longer connect to their company WiFi after the update, noting that the network uses Aruba access points. Commenters have suggested the update has affected 802.1x PEAP connections and NTLMv1 authentication protocols.

A forum post on Microsoft Learn suggests similar issues. User Supply-PWC writes: “After installing KB5127648, Windows 11 clients can no longer authenticate to our WPA2-Enterprise (802.1X/PEAP) wireless network. Authentication starts but never completes [...] The issue reproduces across multiple hardware vendors and wireless chipsets.”

Overall, it seems that Microsoft has fixed one problem only to set off another. We’ll be on the lookout for updates from the firm itself in the coming days.

• A new version of Tiny11 Builder is out that's 'completely redesigned'
• The developer has revamped the interface and made it more modern
• This means it's easier to use — and faster — when creating your own slimline take on Windows 11, for those keen on de-bloating the OS

If you feel Windows 11 is too bloated, one way of tackling that is to make your own light version of the OS – and it's possible to do that with a utility that's been around for a long time now.

Tiny11 Builder lets you create a custom version of Windows 11 without all the bloat you don't want — and the good news is that a new release of this tool makes it a lot more user-friendly.

The Register spotted that NTDEV, the creator of Tiny11, has released a "completely redesigned" Tiny11 Builder, with an all-new fancier interface that makes decluttering Windows 11 a lot easier.

Previously, the Builder tool relied on a cruder setup process leveraging PowerShell scripts, but with this new version you're presented with a WinUI 3 desktop app. In other words, a fully modern Windows 11 app, as you can see from the screenshots, which is a far nicer — and easier — way of working than before.

Builder is also faster now, too, with the developer explaining: "The new Builder is massively more reliable, with features like auto-resume, custom configurations (!) and leveraging the full power of modern PCs in order to speed up the process."

Analysis: a slicker way of cutting down Windows 11

In short, making your own installation image is less intimidating for those who aren't so technically confident, whether you're concocting a custom take on Windows 11, or just using the standard Tiny11 build. The latter removes a whole bunch of Microsoft apps and general bloat, but it keeps the central pillars of the OS, including Windows Update and Microsoft Defender (the built-in antivirus).

That said, there are caveats for those wishing to avail themselves of a super-cut-down version of Windows 11. As a custom installation of the OS, the end result isn't officially supported by Microsoft, and if you go for the default Tiny11 configuration, bear in mind that it's quite aggressive in what it strips out (so you may find features that you use suddenly aren't present).

Definitely steer clear of the 'Core' version of Tiny11, as that removes all sorts of important facets such as Windows 11 feature updates (though not security patches) and Microsoft's recovery environment (for a super-light install). Even the developer recommends that the Core install is for testing in virtual machines only.

Note that a Tiny11 install still requires a valid Windows license. While the app can be used to install Windows 11 on an older PC which doesn't meet the official system requirements, the developer doesn't guarantee that this will work flawlessly, noting that "local-account and hardware-check settings are best effort, not guaranteed bypasses on new builds". As stated, you can also use the tool to install Windows 11 with a local account (something Microsoft is still working to prevent), at least in theory, but again the bypass for this isn't guaranteed.

It's also worth bearing in mind that as with any third-party software, you use Tiny11 at your own risk.

• The Xbox Nano Controller has been announced and launches on November 4
• Pre-orders are open now for the rechargeable, compact controller at $49.99 / £44.99
• Microsoft says it's designed as a pocketable and approachable controller for the whole family

Microsoft has announced the Xbox Nano Controller, an affordable, rechargeable compact gamepad launching on November 4.

Available for pre-order now at $49.99 / £44.99, the Xbox Nano Controller is Microsoft's "smallest controller," at just over 5 inches, weighing 3.5 ounces, and "lighter and shorter than most modern smartphones."

Designed as a pocketable, approachable controller for the whole family, all 18 standard Xbox gameplay inputs are featured, for games like Minecraft Dungeons 2, Grounded, Forza Horizon 6, and more.

"Designed to fit nearly every pocket and budget," Microsoft said, "Its compact design offers a great option for younger players, smaller hands, or anyone seeking something portable for play on the go."

The Nano Controller also includes a rechargeable battery and a programmable Action Button that players can customize for features like screenshots, gameplay capture, and other shortcuts, as well as Xbox Wireless and Bluetooth support, allowing a connection across a range of compatible devices.

In addition, Microsoft has teamed up with Samsung to introduce a special Xbox Nano Controller and a 2-month Game Pass Ultimate offer for new members in the US who purchase select Samsung TVs this holiday season.

It's also working with Meta on a separate holiday offer in the US that includes an Xbox Nano Controller and a 2-month Game Pass Ultimate subscription for new members with the purchase of a Meta Quest.

• Clicking 'Learn more' would skip Microsoft account demands when setting up Windows 11
• It now shows user data policies, so you'll have to sign in with your account (or create one)
• Having an account can make certain things easier, but it's one less choice for consumers

Microsoft has finally fixed one of the easiest ways for attackers to bypass its account requirements when installing Windows 11, but it's bad news for anybody who didn't want to sign in with – or create – a Microsoft account during setup.

Previously, users only had to click the 'Learn more' hyperlink on the sign-in screen to be taken to a local account creation screen.

Ultimately, it marks another step in the company's ongoing efforts to make Microsoft accounts mandatory during the initial setup of Windows 11 on consumer PCs.

Microsoft wants you to use an account to activate Windows 11

Before the fix, users could click the 'Learn more' link and be taken to a screen that allowed them to enter a local username, create a password, configure security questions and complete Windows 11 setup without ever entering their Microsoft username or password.

Instead, the link now opens a page that explains how the company managers user data.

The change "has been recently quietly patched server side," Bob Pony said in a Bluesky post after revealing that "a new method for skipping the mandatory Microsoft Account login in Windows 11 Home Edition has been discovered" just one month ago.

Local accounts remain supported to a certain degree, but creating them either requires technical knowledge to use a third-party tool or command-line methods, or enterprise versions of Windows rather than consumer-grade operating systems.

There are some benefits to signing in with a Microsoft account from the get-go, like speedier setup of system integrations with OneDrive, the Copilot app and other Microsoft products, however it eliminates user choice for those who prefer not to tie their PCs to their online account.

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says Copilot Code and local AI make every Windows PC an infinite software factory with no cloud token spend
• Rather than killing app stores, Microsoft is moving app hosting into Copilot, while IT leaders stay wary of citizen-built tools
• Microsoft's own engineers say local inference doesn't make sessions offline, and the routing ships later this month

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has a new pitch for the Windows PC, and it targets one of the most lucrative ideas in consumer tech.

In a post on X summarizing Microsoft's recent Windows and Surface event, Nadella told followers they no longer have to settle for whatever an app store happens to stock, because Copilot can now build the software they need on the desktop without spending any cloud tokens.

He wrote this idea without mincing any words, saying, "Your PC becomes an infinite software factory."

From Gates' factory to your desk?

The narrative is a striking line from the head of a company that sells more software than almost anyone.

But read Microsoft's own engineering documentation for the same launch, and the infinite factory starts to look rather finite: it runs best on a $5,899 laptop, it still reaches into the cloud, and the businesses Microsoft most needs to convince have spent the past year telling researchers they are worried about exactly this kind of thing.

More importantly, the factory metaphor is not new for Nadella: In a 2025 staff memo, he recalled that Bill Gates had envisioned "not just a software company, but a software factory," and argued the AI era demanded a rethink.

At a recent customer gathering, the CEO said Microsoft had progressed from code assistance through agentic coding "to software factory all within one year," and he now wants customers to open software factories of their own, spending more with Microsoft along the way.

The October 7 2026 launch builds on this ambition: a Windows Experience Blog post by Windows and Devices chief Pavan Davuluri describes hybrid intelligence, in which Copilot reads local files with permission, acts across Windows, and hands work to on-device models.

Copilot's Code experience builds an app, dashboard, or workflow from a plain-language description, and on Windows, Microsoft says it can produce native apps from one prompt. Jared Spataro, Microsoft's chief marketing officer for AI at Work, argued that building such tools is becoming "as basic a skill as writing a memo or modeling a budget."

The engine underneath is MAI-Code-1.1 Flash, Microsoft's in-house 137-billion-parameter coding model, which Nadella's post said is now optimized to run on a PC. There is a catch, however: despite Microsoft painting it as a situation where consumers are finding their AI needs "outpacing what their cloud budgets can support."

Microsoft's own engineers are more grounded about what the process entails, saying GitHub Copilot's automatic mode decides task by task whether work runs locally or in the cloud, and one diagram caption is blunt: "local inference does not make the session offline."

That routing doesn't ship until the end of October 2026; the hybrid Copilot features reach Copilot+ PCs over the coming months, and Code is rolling out first through Microsoft's Frontier early-access program. This is interesting, but somewhat predictable, because Nadella's approach, as stated, would cannibalize Microsoft's token-based business model.

An approach that routes harder tasks back to the Azure cloud makes far more sense by conserving compute where possible while still putting Microsoft's cloud compute at the center of things.

The hardware is another factor that one might be overlooking here: according to the Command Line post, the on-device version of MAI-Code-1.1 Flash is quantized down to 53GB, roughly an 80% reduction from the cloud model, and peaked at 75.5GB of memory at full context on Microsoft's test machine, a Surface Laptop Ultra built on Nvidia's RTX Spark.

That matters because eight Surface Laptop Ultra configurations are in play; only one has more than 64GB of memory, per TweakTown: the 128GB model at $5,899, which costs $3300 more than the base model and isn't available to purchase yet, meaning that potential users can't really test out how well it does compared to cloud-based solutions at a time when all performance-related figures come from Microsoft.

The death of modern enterprise software? Not yet

Despite the hardware limitations in play, it might indicate a death sentence in the making for most basic enterprise-level software solutions, even as more ambitious ports have already been in play: Developer Brandon Thomas, for one, has just released seven open source Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives that he says he built with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, declaring that "software is over."

His own roadmap, however, puts the Photoshop stand-in at roughly a quarter to a third of what a professional needs for daily work. Building software has become cheap. Building software someone can depend on has not.

The bigger issue will be enterprise IT, which will, I suspect, keep the gates closed for now; enterprises don't just buy features; they buy someone to call when it breaks, a patch schedule, an audit trail, and a vendor that carries liability.

Getting an open-source or AI-assisted app someone designed with zero liability in tow that could break things, create security risks, and may not come with future software updates that resolve either issue.

The survey data points the same way: a June 2026 Retool study of 307 CTOs, CIOs, and CISOs found 93% concerned about vibe-coded tools reaching production, though Retool sells an internal-tools platform pitched as the governed alternative.

A Harris Poll survey for Dataiku of 600 CIOs found 81% worried that citizen-built AI could expose sensitive data, and over half had already discovered unsanctioned AI in their organizations.

Gartner, meanwhile, predicts that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be scrapped by the end of 2027, with analyst Anushree Verma describing many as "mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied."

Microsoft's own launch materials quietly concede the same, even taking measures to ensure that agents do not run rogue while building software or solutions on-device.

The Command Line post admits Copilot's built-in file tools are policy-checked inside the app rather than isolated by the operating system, and GitHub requires Business and Enterprise administrators to enable a policy before staff can use MAI-Code-1.1 Flash at all, while Microsoft Execution Containers, which are now generally available, allow IT to define what agents can read, modify, or execute.

The real test for Nadella's factory isn't individuals with a $5,899 laptop and a tolerance for alpha software, but businesses willing to take the risk and trust Microsoft's safeguards. Until then, one could assume the AI factory narrative will continue to run well below its advertised potential.

• Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents can now be opened, edited and shared inside the Copilot app
• Could this be the company "figuring out what Copilot, and the future of work, should look like"?
• Microsoft describes Copilot as the "new way to work"

Microsoft is making some hefty upgrades to its Copilot app, allowing users to create, edit and collaborate on popular Office documents directly within the AI hub.

This marks a major shift for the company's AI strategy, which previously focused on adding Copilot functionality into its Word, Excel and PowerPoint apps. Instead, this reverses that decision and puts Word, Excel and PowerPoint into the Copilot app.

The Copilot app will likely become the central workspace, allowing users to interact with AI to produce documents without them then having to go off and open those documents in Office apps to make further adjustments.

Word, Excel and PowerPoint now embedded inside Copilot app

Document creation is nothing unexpected, and Copilot retains its abilities to generate new documents based on user conversations within Copilot Chat or Copilot Cowork. The biggest change is the addition of Library within the Copilot app, which puts those documents within reach inside that single interface.

Collaboration is also a big emphasis for the company, which confirmed that users will still be able to share, comment and review documents within Copilot.

"Microsoft Office has defined productivity for the PC era," Office Product Group Sumit Chauhan explained. Chauhan was named as one of the EVPs to report to Copilot, Agents and Platform EVP Charles Lamanna amid the departure of M365's previous EVP, Ryan Roslansky.

At that time, we knew that the company was "figuring out what Copilot, and the future of work, should look like as one ecosystem," and this is likely part one in a much bigger shift for M365.

"As Copilot becomes a new way to work, we're bringing familiar Office creation and collaboration experiences directly into that environment," Chauhan added, noting the push for a "more unified experience."

That new unified experience inside the Copilot app is only available to Frontier customers in Chat and Cowork, but it could only be a few months until it gets pushed onto more users.

• Vibe-coded clones of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint have appeared
• They're from the same developer who cloned the Adobe apps
• The developer says other open source software is 'broken'

The developer who used AI tools to clone the Adobe Creative Cloud suite and release the copied versions for free has now done the same with Microsoft Office.

As Tom's Hardware reports, there are now open-source versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint available, all looking very similar to the Microsoft apps and all with rebranded names: WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft, respectively.

These programs don't appear to be as far along in development as the Adobe clones, but the intention is there — and it's going to be a serious concern for large software companies wanting to protect their products.

The clones are the work of software engineer Brandon Thomas, who has been taking to social media to point out that he has years of experience in coding, even if he has been using the Anthropic AI Claude to do the bulk of the work on these recent projects.

'GIMP sucks'

There has also been criticism aimed at Thomas for choosing AI 'vibe coding' rather than supporting current open-source software like LibreOffice, GIMP, and Thunderbird. However, the developer doesn't seem to be a fan of these projects.

"GIMP sucks," says Thomas. "It has always sucked. There is no reason to save broken software." He's also recently related the story of a bad experience with LibreOffice that "killed a 40-page essay I wrote the week it was due, during finals".

The reaction on Reddit is split between those who see this as a "game-changing" positive for the software industry, and those who say "no job is safe" from the relentless march of AI and the increasingly powerful capabilities of these bots and agents.

Other commenters point out that free programs like LibreOffice and Google Docs have existed for years without damaging Microsoft Office sales too much, and question whether this lone developer will be able to keep up with bug fixes and upgrades.

Devices now known as KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switches, which allow multiple computers to use a single set of input devices and monitor, predate USB and even the mouse (That’s why the “M” is tacked on at the end).

PCs have also been able to support multiple monitors since the ‘80s, with the Mac leading the way and Windows users getting integrated support in the Windows 98. Years of studies have shown how people are generally more productive on two monitors than one, and that productivity is why we've previously highlighted the best KVM switch deals we can find.

But there’s a third multi-device scenario that combines elements of peripheral sharing and multiple monitors: controlling two PCs, each with its own display(s), with a single keyboard and mouse.

There are many reasons to choose this, including rapid switching between a PC for coding and a development target, having constant visual access to multiple platforms while saving desk space, and working across a work PC and a personal one.

My use case is keeping one PC display as a fixed dashboard that I can update on the fly while I hop around virtual desktops that would normally hide that dashboard from view. Many companies, including Apple, Asus, and Lenovo, have developed options that let you extend your work surface to a tablet, and Windows includes support for using another PC as an external display, and Logitech enables the feature if you use one of its higher-end keyboards or mice.

But if you want a vendor-independent approach, there are several software-only and hardware options (most of which also require software). Many offer a choice between “seamless” mode, in which a mouse can be dragged from one computer's display to another’s, and “hotkey” mode, in which pressing a key combination instantly switches control of the cursor from one PC to another.

While the latter can be quicker depending on where your cursor is on the screen, it can sometimes take a moment to reorient yourself to its new position.

The Soft Switch

Software options often convenience and expedience. As long as you have a shared internet connection between the PCs, you can download one of the programs and soon be slinging your cursor around like a digital lariat. They also don’t require any extra desk space or available USB connections. And while hardware options are usually limited to two computers, software-based bridges can work across more PCs than one would practically have at the ready.

However, these options usually require that the computers be connected to the same network. And as is the case for other peer-to-peer applications that work over Wi-Fi, trying them in a public network situation, such as a cafe or co-working space, often fails.

And of course, if the Wi-Fi becomes spotty or unavailable, the connection can slow down or break. Furthermore, only some of the options work across platforms and none with Chrome OS. That said, there are at least four solutions out there that can bridge the gap.

Mouse Without Borders was one of the projects hatched out of Microsoft Garage. The skunkworks group focused mostly on mobile apps, but MwB works only on Windows. While it hasn’t been updated in several years, it still works well, is also available in PowerToys, and is one of the simplest apps to set up. After installing it on up to four PCs, you launch the app and select the networked PCs you want to join. The software generates a lengthy passcode to bind them.

Once entered, you can move your cursor freely between devices. MwB also supports automatic Clipboard sharing between computers so you can conveniently copy information from one computer and move it to its next-door neighbor. This also works with copying and pasting files in Explorer, although you cannot drag files from one PC to another.

The Voyages of the Enterprise

Two other options, Synergy and DeskFlow, have an unusual shared history. The former began life as an open source app 25 years ago before the developer took it commercial through a company now also called Synergy.

When forks such as Barrier and Input Leap failed to stay up to date, the company contributed financial and code resources to help develop DeskFlow as an actively maintained open source successor. Both offer support for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

After installation, one PC is designated as the server and others, typically specified by their IP address, are designated as clients. A “grid” user interface available from both ends allows you to specify whether the mouse jumps to the other computer via the left, right, top, or bottom edges of the display.

Both support TLS encryption and Clipboard sharing. But Synergy uses Bonjour network detection to streamline locating other computers on the network as well as more robust enterprise management features.

When used with multiple laptops, however, these apps did not allow the “client” PC mouse to move the cursor back over to the “server” PC as other tools did. Synergy’s price varies with the number of computers you want to control with it: $15 for three, $19for five, and $29 for 15 with separate enterprise pricing.

Synergy (the company) is also previewing a new addition to its line-up called Synergy Dragon. In addition to a slicker user interface, it allows transferring files between connecting computers right from its preview and more accurate monitor size representations.

Best known for its apps that provide radical Windows makeovers and interface enhancements, Stardock Software also offers Multiplicity, which also works only on Windows. As with DeskFlow and Synergy, one PC is considered the primary computer or server while others are clients.

In addition to traversing multiple PCs, the Pro version of the software lets you use another PC as a second monitor, switch among multiple PCs on one monitor (KVM functionality), and even send multiple display outputs from another PC to a single monitor.

It can also route audio from one PC through the speakers of another, so you can have a consistent audio experience. Multiplicity starts at $30 for use on up to five PCs.

The $40 Pro version includes all features except for the enterprise management options for use on up to 10 PCs. But the licenses are needed only for the controlling software and don’t limit how many PCs you can control (two for the baseline version, nine for Pro)..

In my next column, I’ll discuss some of the hardware options available to bridge multiple computers and conclude with some recommendations.

Read more: The best monitors for a dual-screen setup

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is great at generating valuable insights, but what companies end up doing with those insights - that’s where true achievement lies, and that’s what companies should be focusing on.

This is one of the core messages delivered by Ryan Waite, Director of Open Source Ecosystems and Incubations at Microsoft, during his keynote, “From Open Source to Agentic Systems: Building the AI Native Era” at the Open Source Summit.

Waite described the interaction between AI and human expertise as a learning loop, a kind of hill-climbing machine that helps businesses improve, and keep on improving.

The knowledge belongs to the business

AI models are great at processing enormous amounts of information and generating insights at a scale humans cannot match (and sometimes cannot even fathom), but people bring something arguably more important to the table: context and judgement.

Putting insights into wider context, and using that to make conclusions, helps employees turn information into knowledge, and that knowledge later becomes part of the organization’s collective expertise. And with every iteration the knowledge grows, helping businesses climb further up the proverbial mountain.

Sovereignty and ownership seem to be an underlying theme to most of the keynotes here at the Open Source Summit, and Waite’s presentation is no different. As AI generates insight, and humans turn that insight to knowledge, it now becomes vital to secure that knowledge and make sure it remains under the organization’s control.

“It's based on your data,” he said. “It's based on your people. It shouldn't be given off to an AI model, that's separate. And that's why we believe that for organizations to build their own hill-climbing machines, to build their own learning groups, they need to build control with the sort of learning loops and not be beholden to a single AI provider.”

After all, everything AI generates is based (or at least, should be) on proprietary business information, and the decisions made based on those insights depend on employees and their understanding of the company. So, businesses need to make sure ownership of the knowledge accumulated through these interactions are not handed over to an external AI provider - a challenge that will probably grow bigger and bigger as businesses become more dependent on AI tools.

The knowledge generated through these tools could become tied to a particular model, or provider. What happens when businesses want to adopt better technologies as they emerge? To future-proof these processes, Waite argues businesses should build their own learning loops and maintain control over the information, processes, and technologies that make them work.

Choosing the right AI model

One way to do that is to make sure you’re not tied to a single AI model. Many businesses, Waite says, begin their AI journey with proprietary frontier models, especially when tackling problems they don’t fully understand themselves. However, as they become better and understand their tasks more, they might not need expensive frontier models any more - they can move to specialized models that could be smaller, or cheaper. They could even move to open-weight models they can operate themselves.

“Having the ability to move between different models is important, especially as you think about your algorithms. Which models are you going to use? You shouldn't be trapped with a particular kind of model because it has your knowledge,” he concluded.

So, what’s important here is to retain the freedom to switch and move along the way. That also means businesses need to control where their AI workloads run, whether that’s within sovereign infrastructure governed by local regulations, on-prem systems, or public cloud environments (where they can take advantage of greater scalability and cost advantages).

Open source technologies provide the foundation for this flexibility, Waite concluded.

• Microsoft is rolling out a new font for Microsoft 365 apps
• The 'Michelangelus' font is based on Michelangelo's handwriting
• However, it's a loose digital interpretation, and some feel that the font and the real handwriting are 'wildly different'

Think fonts are boring? Well, that's fair, they certainly aren't the most interesting topic on the planet, but every now and then one comes along that does make you sit up and take notice.

A case in point (12-point, perhaps) is that as Microsoft announced in a blog post, Michelangelo's handwriting is being rolled out to Microsoft 365 users – or a modern approximation of it at least.

The 'Michelangelus' font has been created as part of the anniversary of the consecration of St. Peter's Basilica, which took place 400 years ago (on November 18).

The font was made to be used for digital and printed materials relating to the Basilica, as well as signage inside the building, but the decision was made to share it with the world via Microsoft Office.

An Italian design agency, studiogusto, was commissioned by the Fabbrica di San Pietro to turn Michelangelo's characters into digital versions, noting that the idea was not a direct imitation of his handwriting, but to "adapt it through design into a modern tool."

Mimmo Berterame, the CEO of studiogusto, noted that: "For him [Michelangelo], [writing] was about clarity and respect for the reader. So, beauty was important, but it also needed order. Our typeface needs character and personality, but it also needs to be clear and easy to read."

In other words, the font is a modern approximation of his penmanship based on the 'rules' and feel of the writing style, so it doesn't look too over-the-top, but it still maintains some of Michelangelo's flourishes (like dotting the top of the 'h').

Analysis: fun with fonts

Some of the reaction to the font has veered towards the less-than-impressed in terms of the resemblance of the digital letters to the real handwriting. As one Redditor says: "That is certainly a very loose interpretation of the phrase 'based on.'"

A reply points out that the official press release from the Basilica di San Pietro explains that: "The typeface draws inspiration from Michelangelo Buonarroti's bold, expressive handwriting. However, it goes beyond a mere reproduction of the artist's graphic style and an imitation of his calligraphic techniques.

"The ambition is broader: to identify within his handwriting a visual logic, a system of proportions, rhythm and harmony measured by the artist's eye, and to translate this into a contemporary typographic system."

However, the original poster remains largely unmoved, noting that: "That's a noble goal and an ambitious approach, but I really don't feel their execution lives up to their intent."

Somebody else observes: "Among many other characters which don't even come close, the capital letters A and M in this interpretation are wildly different. I don't get the feeling of handwriting at all from it."

I can see where the criticism is coming from, and it stems from the fact that the design is clearly titled much more towards clarity and a more contemporary, readable look, than it is the actual handwriting. Still, regardless of how you gauge the interpretation here, the end result looks very smart.

If your curiosity is piqued and you are heading off to Word to try the new font, hold up a minute, because it hasn't been rolled out just yet.

Si Daniels, who is Principal Product Designer, Office Design, explains that the new font will be rolled out to Microsoft 365 apps at the end of the year. However, if you can't wait, you can manually download and install it from here.

In my books, the most satisfying part of any action role-playing game (ARPG) like Diablo or Titan Quest is the constant feeling of progression. Nothing quite compares to watching your little on-screen hero grow from a tiny ant that can barely bash their way through a pack of lowly wolves to a maxed-out bringer of destruction that mows through entire armies without breaking a sweat.

Minecraft Dungeons 2’s aggressive level scaling robs the player of that experience. In the more than 12 hours it took for me to beat the story campaign, I never felt more powerful. Sure, I unlocked more interesting abilities and got to try a variety of weapons, but the amount of time required to take down each newly spawned foe remained near-constant throughout.

A friend even joined my game towards the end of my playthrough, with their level 1 character effortlessly keeping pace with my level 40 one throughout the final encounters, really underscoring the system’s ridiculousness. I’m sure the intention here is to make it easy for friends to jump into the same lobbies and play together without having to worry about their respective levels, but it left me wondering what the point of all the grinding actually is.

Blocky buddies

It’s a shame, because there is still some good in Minecraft Dungeons 2. This standalone spinoff recreates the blocky look of the popular Minecraft survival game expertly, with its own more stylized twists that make the world instantly recognizable, yet refreshingly new thanks to more expressive lighting and Pixar-like character animations that make everything pop even from the distant isometric perspective.

I may have lamented the fact that I couldn’t wow my friend with my character’s power, but the co-op experience is otherwise well done. Creating a group with up to three companions is impressively straightforward no matter where they play, thanks to seamless cross-platform connectivity. There’s even couch co-op, which is quite rare in 2026 and worth praising. The ability to play with others easily goes a long way in making Minecraft Dungeons 2 genuinely worthwhile for younger players.

For everyone else, however, everything here is just too straightforward to appeal. The enemy variety is sorely lacking for starters. The expected Minecraft favorites like the Creepers, Zombies, Skeletons, and, of course, the iconic Chicken Jockey are all present and accounted for, along with the evil grey-skinned Illagers from the first Minecraft Dungeons game. Unfortunately, most enemies function indistinguishably. Those with projectile weapons spray arrows at you from afar, while the rest just rush towards you in a big group.

The strategy in every encounter is to simply mash the attack button and occasionally dodge, even as more powerful Illagers with magic attacks are introduced. The boss fights are equally bland, forcing you to whittle down gigantic health bars for minutes at a time while waves of low-level enemies spawn in. To make matters worse, many of them are repeated throughout the campaign with little variation.

It’s frustrating because, on paper, the combat does have some depth: you have a melee and ranged attack, plus three equipped abilities granted by items that you’ve managed to find.

The weapon selection is decently varied, with scooping shovels and fast-attacking double daggers performing very differently from slow-swinging war hammers or claymores, and a steady trickle of new gear encourages you to experiment. They can be upgraded too, with unlockable enchantments that add little mechanics such as a lightning strike that triggers at the end of a chain attack.

Your abilities are powered by a blue soul-meter, which fills up a little with each defeated foe. I think the intention is to create some form of rhythm, with you alternating between melee, ranged, and your abilities, but the fundamental problem is that there’s just no real strategy to any of it.

Sure, you could probably spend ages creating a build with complementary gear – though there’s no real reason to bother when the aforementioned enemy scaling wipes out any real power gain.

Lacking craft

Much was made of Minecraft Dungeons 2’s world in its marketing. It’s much more open than the previous game, though I wouldn’t exactly call it a true open-world.

The map is designed like a linear corridor that funnels you from one story mission to another with no real room for exploration. Yes, there are side quests and optional dungeons scattered around, but none of the ones that I sampled offered anything that felt meaningfully distinct from the main story.

Regarding the story, the most polite way to describe it would be ‘functional’. It’s presented entirely in second person through a narrator that is devoid of personality. There are no memorable non-player characters (NPCs), no charming companions, no real atmosphere at all — just a bland summary of events.

The game also serves as the Minecraft community’s introduction to The Sift — a new dimension that’s being added to the main game sometime next year. It shows up a few times in the campaign in both procedurally generated encounters and a hand-crafted map. It's got a very distinct aesthetic and its own unique enemies, though it's sadly mechanically indistinguishable from the normal world as you navigate through it spamming attacks.

Like many elements of Minecraft Dungeons 2, it feels like a missed opportunity. Everything here is perfectly functional, but it’s just bland to the point of tedium. If the pitch was a skimmed-down version of Diablo for kids, then developers Mojang and Double Eleven have delivered a serviceable product.

Creativity is a core part of the Minecraft brand, and here I wish the team had been more adventurous.

Should I play Minecraft Dungeons 2?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Minecraft Dungeons 2 has some accessibility options. The game features a guidance trail that is enabled by default. Subtitles are used throughout, with customizable sizing, color, and background opacity.

There are two font options: the default stylized font and a simplified, easier-to-read version. There are also multiple color blind modes, a high-contrast mode, and the ability to set your own HUD colors.

How I reviewed Minecraft Dungeons 2

I played more than 13 hours of Minecraft Dungeons 2 on my RTX 4090-powered PC using the Turtle Beach Pacific Skyline Wireless Controller as my main peripheral, along with a 1080P Lenovo monitor and Logitech computer speakers.

I completed all missions of the single-player campaign and experienced a decent amount of side content both solo and with a friend.

First reviewed October 2026

• Microsoft has an initiative to improve the quality of drivers
• Intel's new Wi-Fi driver for Windows 11 contains the first glimpse of this
• More should come soon from Intel and others, and the initiative should help not just with stability, but also the performance of Windows 11

Remember Microsoft's plan to improve the quality of drivers in Windows 11? Work is well underway on this scheme, and Intel appears to be ahead of the rest of the pack in implementing this.

It's broadly known as Microsoft's Driver Quality Initiative (DQI), and Windows Latest reports that Intel has already begun to follow these new rules with its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth drivers for Windows 11.

The tech site has dug into Intel's wireless drivers and notes that they "follow early DQI practices", although the full scope of this initiative has yet to be implemented.

Nonetheless, it's good to see that the cogs are whirring on this effort, and in Intel's release notes for a recent Wi-Fi driver for Windows 11 (v24.50.0), the company said that it was applying "enhancements aligned with Microsoft's Windows ecosystem quality initiative."

With any luck, a couple of months down the line we'll see this work come to fruition, and Intel's GPU drivers should be due for the same treatment.

Windows Latest observes that Intel is set to work on its Arc drivers and knock them into shape for the DQI, too — and Team Blue has already added support for Windows 11 26H2 with its October graphics driver update.

PC hardware makers are already testing their drivers and working on DQI compliance actively. However, so far Intel is the only company to actually release an update to the computing public running Windows 11 that has benefited from this polishing.

Analysis: better quality goes beyond stability

What does the Driver Quality Initiative really mean? It should usher in a new era of more stable drivers for Windows 11, and therefore fewer crashes with the OS. Microsoft is focusing on upping the bar for reliability with Windows drivers that are provided by third-party hardware makers like Intel, but DQI goes beyond that.

This isn't just about preventing crashes, or wonky Windows 11 updates, but also ensuring tighter security, and that there's a higher quality of drivers coming through which don't drag down performance levels (or cause overheating issues with laptops, meaning combating excessive battery drain, too). Outdated drivers, or those that don't meet the new quality bar, will be unceremoniously ditched from Microsoft's OS.

It sounds like a big step forward for stability with Windows 11 in general, and as I've long argued now, this is an area where Microsoft has a serious problem in terms of the public perception of its desktop OS. I still think Microsoft must address issues around policing its own updates for Windows 11, though, and internal QA and testing processes.

• Microsoft has changed the way cloud storage works with the Microsoft 365 Family and Premium plans
• Instead of getting a possible total of 6TB — with 1TB for each of six family members — these plans now share 2TB between all users
• Microsoft argues this gives you greater flexibility, and that's true, but it works out badly for families where a lot of people are using cloud storage

Microsoft has changed the way the included storage works with its Microsoft 365 Family and Premium plans — and it's left quite a few people unhappy.

Neowin spotted the move, which Microsoft explained in a new support document, whereby what was previously a ceiling of 6TB of storage on OneDrive has been reduced to 2TB.

Microsoft explains that: "Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscriptions include 2TB of shared cloud storage … The primary subscriber and up to five additional members draw from the same shared storage pool."

How it worked before was that each family member was allocated 1TB of cloud storage, so in the case where a full complement of six people were using the family subscription, that meant 6TB of storage in total.

However, as it now stands in the scenario of six family members using the plan, each of them is only getting a slice of the total of 2TB, so around 330GB apiece. In other words, a third of what they were previously receiving.

This new package is in effect for new Microsoft 365 Family and Premium subscribers from now, but for existing customers, it comes into play when their next plan renewal happens after (or on) May 2, 2027. (Quite what happens with multi-year deals isn't clear).

If you want to still have 5TB of total storage, the Microsoft 365 Pro plan gives you that, but it costs a hefty $99 (£95 / AU$165) per month, so it's a huge leap over the Family subscription (over 7x pricier).

Analysis: weasel-speak and greed?

Microsoft argues that this works out better for some family plan subscribers, and that "this approach provides more flexibility by making storage available to the people who need it most."

That's true to a point. Certainly if only the primary subscriber is using the cloud storage to any meaningful extent, they can now avail themselves of basically the whole chunk of 2TB rather than just 1TB. And obviously two main users get 1TB each, so that's the same as it was, but if there are more than a few active cloud storage users, this is a much poorer deal.

That's not the only problem, though, in that this change could hit existing subscribers in quite a nasty way. What if all (or most) of those multiple family users have already loaded up their OneDrive cloud lockers with 800GB or so, for example – they'll now have to cut that right down, or pay for more cloud storage.

So, if you're affected, you've potentially only got seven months (until May next year) to rejig your family's cloud storage and shift files elsewhere.

There's been quite a lot of negative reaction as you might guess, and observations that this amounts to a kind of bait-and-switch tactic. Someone on Reddit complains: "So disappointing seeing everyone getting sucked into this cycle. Something is cheap/liberal with features to gain customers, then jack up prices and cut features."

Others aren't happy about the 'weasel-speak' here (as in 'look, we're giving you more flexibility'), or they feel this is just another example of Microsoft's greed.

One Redditor complains: "Bad decision, they will find many customers cancel the auto renewal now."

Another simply states: "Greedy company. They never stop do they?"

In fairness to Microsoft, what was a great deal has become an okay deal cloud storage-wise – it's still not a bad offering, and 2TB is a decent amount of space for the money. But as noted, it does leave some folks very much in the lurch, and a bad taste in the mouth as we can clearly see from the online commentary.

The other worry is that now this has happened, Microsoft might look to trim the allowance of the Microsoft 365 Personal plan (for one individual) down from 1TB. I hope not, as this is a very different situation to the family subscription – there can be no arguments about 'flexibility' improvements if the company drops that storage limit.

• The Trump administration is cracking down on visa programs to 'protect American jobs'
• Multiple top US tech companies have been hit by an H-1B and green card suspension
• Nine top US universities have also been subject to a suspension on international applications

The Trump administration is continuing its efforts to protect American jobs and crackdown on fraud by suspending Microsoft and Adobe alongside several major IT outsourcers from the H-1B green-card program and opening probes into nine universities.

“There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has ​abused the system more than Microsoft,” Vice President JD Vance said.

Hours later, President Trump praised Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Elon Musk for their contributions to America. Nadella and Musk both previously held H-1B visas, and three other CEOs in attendance - praised by Trump - are immigrants.

Protecting American jobs

Vance has claimed Microsoft has laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 while simultaneously taking on 6,300 H-1B temporary worker visas and almost 3,000 green cards.

To hire green-card workers, employers must file applications in line with the permanent labor certification (PERM), which requires employers to show the foreign hire will not hurt US jobs or wages. According to the US labor department Microsoft is the largest filer for PERM applications, filing more than twice the amount than the next largest tech company Apple.

Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL Technologies, and Capgemini have also been suspended. "We will not accept any new or process any pending permanent labor certification applications involving these companies," said Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling.

Sonderling added that these companies had collectively filed applications for almost three million workers, with over 230,000 H-1B visas approved and more than 100,000 permanent labour certifications received.

Vance also accused some companies of posting job ads designed to be ineffective so that companies could point to the lack of applicants as justification for hiring foreign workers for lower pay.

Microsoft hits back

Microsoft has responded to Vance’s statements, explaining that “of the approximately 6,000 H-1B visa applications we submitted in the last fiscal year, 80% percent were to extend or change the status of existing Microsoft employees.”

The company statement added that the remaining filings were for “individuals already legally in the United States who decided to come work for us,” that make up just 1% of the company’s US workforce. Microsoft added that it pays employees “some of the highest compensation in the tech sector, and our wages are among the highest of all H-1B filings.”

“Microsoft succeeds as a global technology leader by developing the world’s best technology workforce. We do this by strengthening this country’s talent pipeline, hiring American workers, and attracting the best talent from around the world,” the statement concluded.

Top universities in the firing line

Nine universities have also been caught up in the visa suspension, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vance said an investigation is being launched to examine the misuse of exchange-visitor visas to undercut American wages, alongside investigations into whether foreign influence, improper financial relationships, and visas were abusing federally funded research.

Harvard has previously been targeted by the Trump administration over alleged misconduct by international students and alleged non-compliance with immigration law. The Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed the university to investigate these claims, which Harvard labeled "unfounded retribution".

According to Sarah Spreitzer, a vice president at the American Council on Education, “It could have an enormous economic impact on the whole US economy” (via Reuters) as international students spend around $40 billion a year while in the US.

Uncertainty over future university visa status could seriously affect international applications.

• Microsoft just launched the Surface Laptop Ultra
• It's urging Apple laptop owners to "break up with your MacBook and get up to $1,000"
• The trade-in values you'll get for older MacBooks are low, and you'd be much better off selling second-hand yourself

It's clear enough that the new Surface Laptop Ultra is aiming to poach MacBook Pro owners, and Microsoft is making no secret of that fact – indeed, it's trying to bribe Apple laptop users in a way.

Mashable flagged up that if you head to the Surface Laptop Ultra product page in the US, there's a banner along the top where Microsoft is urging folks to "break up with your MacBook and get up to $1,000."

An asterisk is attached to that amount, as it is a trade-in scheme where buyers of the new Surface model, at quite a cost, can get money off if they're willing to part-exchange their MacBook Pro. The cash you'll receive very much depends on the age and the condition of your Apple laptop, as you'd expect.

$1,000 is the maximum payment, but you won't get this unless you are trading in a newer and well-specced MacBook.

The typical payment is considerably lower. For example, if you have a MacBook Pro 13-inch from 2020 with an entry-level spec (8GB/256GB) the trade-in value is just $45. A MacBook Pro 14-inch from 2023 with an M3 chip (8GB/512GB) will land you $275, which isn't going to make a huge dent in the asking price of most Surface Laptop Ultra models.

You'll need a newer laptop for a decent payout, such as a MacBook Pro 14-inch from 2024 with an M4 chip (16GB/1TB), which will net you $755.

That's a value based on your provided assessment of the MacBook, but bear in mind that if Microsoft's trade-in partner doesn't feel you've been accurate or truthful, it'll drop the value – you can then decide whether to take that lower offer, or have your MacBook returned.

This offer appears to be for the US only (it wasn't available in the UK when I looked).

Analysis: a touch of desperation?

Yes, I get that Microsoft is making no bones about going after the MacBook market, but you only have to look at the design of the Surface Laptop Ultra to realize that. Urging Apple fans to 'break up' with their MacBook is, I guess, supposed to be a playful or amusing way of trying to attract defectors to the Windows side of the OS world, but it just comes across as a little desperate.

It's fair enough that Microsoft wants to highlight that it has a trade-in program for those interested enough to browse to the product page for its new, much more powerful Surface, but I think the manner in which this is currently couched needs to be revisited.

I've been flitting about various Reddit threads today gauging the broad reaction to the Surface Laptop Ultra, and if there's one thing that's clear, it's that Apple owners are pretty disparaging, by and large, of Microsoft's efforts here. Of course, those are the people most likely to be drawn to comment, as always.

Also bear in mind that while a trade-in may seem tempting in some respects, as noted, you may find the initial offer is downgraded – and you're going to get more (maybe a fair bit more) selling the device second-hand yourself. That's not as easy, naturally, but it might well be worth the effort, or at least having a quick punt at it.

• Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599 for professional users
• Microsoft is targeting creators, developers, scientists and AI specialists
• RTX Spark brings Nvidia’s Blackwell graphics into Microsoft’s professional laptop

Microsoft has unveiled its most powerful laptop device yet - the Surface Laptop Ultra, with shipments scheduled to begin on October 16 2026.

The device will cost from $2,599, putting it directly into the price range of high-end machines used by creators and technical professionals.

Microsoft is also offering configurations costing $3,699.99 and $5,899.99, giving the Surface Laptop Ultra specifications aimed at demanding professional workloads

Surface Laptop Ultra focuses on professional workloads

Microsoft says the laptop is designed for creators, AI specialists, engineers, scientists, developers, and other users running demanding applications.

The entry configuration comes with 24GB RAM and 512GB storage, while the next version has 32GB RAM and 1TB storage.

The highest configuration includes 128GB RAM and 1TB storage, while every model uses the same 15-inch mini-LED display.

Its hardware combines Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform with an N1X processor and RTX Blackwell graphics, supporting up to 128GB unified memory.

The laptop can run demanding games, but Microsoft is presenting it primarily around professional applications rather than gaming performance.

Adobe is adapting Premiere Pro and Photoshop for RTX Spark, while a demonstration showed an optimized Premiere Pro version rendering a scene faster.

That software support matters because applications must be adapted properly before users can fully benefit from the platform’s Arm-based architecture.

Unfortunately, the laptop lacks ConnectX-7 and QSFP ports, limiting direct high-speed connectivity with DGX Spark systems that use Nvidia networking hardware.

That omission could be deliberate, since adding dedicated high-speed networking would raise hardware costs and make the laptop more closely aligned with Nvidia’s specialized systems.

This could matter for AI professionals who expect the Surface Laptop Ultra to connect directly with other Nvidia systems for high-speed development workloads.

Microsoft takes on Apple’s professional laptops

Microsoft says the laptop is designed for creators, AI specialists, engineers, scientists, developers and other users running demanding applications.

The Surface Laptop Ultra has a large trackpad, premium display and professional design that resemble features found on Apple’s MacBook Pro.

Its specifications also place it against high-end professional laptops rather than mainstream Windows machines designed mainly for everyday productivity.

Microsoft’s intended users include professionals who need substantial memory, graphics capability and software support for AI, development and content creation.

Adobe’s work on Premiere Pro and Photoshop could become important because application support will influence how useful RTX Spark becomes for professional users.

The laptop’s high memory ceiling also gives the highest configuration capacity suited to workloads that require substantial local resources.

However, its connectivity choices create a distinction between the Surface Laptop Ultra and Nvidia’s dedicated development hardware.

That limitation is particularly relevant when considering the laptop as an AI development machine rather than simply another high-end professional computer.

Microsoft is therefore entering Apple’s professional laptop space with powerful hardware, but its Nvidia platform also comes with connectivity limitations.

• Windows 11 search is getting a major overhaul
• It'll be made faster, more efficient with RAM usage, and be tweaked to better understand what you're searching for
• Microsoft is also adding 'actions' to allow users to directly adjust Windows 11 options in the search box, a nifty and convenient touch

Microsoft has announced that it's forging onwards with making Windows 11's search function a faster and more streamlined experience.

In a blog post, Microsoft said it's rolling out this redesigned search experience to Windows 11 testers in the Experimental channel now (likely in a very limited fashion to begin with).

This new search is built on WinUI 3 (the contemporary interface framework for Windows 11), and as a result it'll be faster and will have less impact on your system resources. Microsoft boasts that: "Early testing shows substantial improvements in performance and memory usage, so [search] feels faster and more efficient from the moment you open it."

The search panel itself has been pared back to a single list, as opposed to the current implementation with the list on the left and the preview pane on the right. The interface therefore looks less cluttered, and it's easier to see what you're, well, searching for.

Microsoft also promises it'll work on ensuring that search more readily grasps what you're trying to find, with better handling of typos and guessing what you might mean if you're, say, attempting to find a system option and have entered the name incorrectly. This is work that the company already started in Windows 11, and the post notes that Microsoft will continue to fine-tune all this over the coming weeks.

This is what's happening initially; then, later this year, Microsoft is going to bring more features into testing. That includes inline previews and details that give you all kinds of extra info on the file you're searching (like a thumbnail for an image along with its resolution and size).

Search queries like "weather in London" will bring up an in-line card (powered by Bing) with the relevant at-a-glance details, including the likes of temperature highs and lows for the day.

The other big step is to introduce 'actions' to Windows 11 search, meaning you can simply type a command to change settings in the OS directly from the search box. Microsoft shows an example of typing 'change to dark theme' which pops up the option, then you simply click apply and you're done.

You can type 'mute' to turn off sound, or 'dim my screen' to adjust the brightness level automatically, and issue a similar range of instructions via search.

Analysis: some polarized reactions

These are clearly useful changes, although as with much of the work to fix Windows 11 this year, one of the main questions is: why wasn't this done before? It's long been known that Windows 11 search is clunky and sluggish, with too much clutter in the panel — so why has it taken Microsoft so long to address these points?

A typical barb on Reddit runs like this: "It only took decades for Microsoft to sort this abysmal search out." Someone adds that: "The only time search was decent in Windows was in Windows 98 SE."

Okay, so this kind of flak isn't fair, as other Redditors point out, but you can certainly say that it's not acceptable that Windows 11's search has been in bad shape since the launch of the OS half a decade ago.

It's good to see meaningful movement towards a slicker search is happening, and I'll definitely take this. The actions are a nifty idea, too, for quickly changing options there and then (rather than simply locating the option, and having to use extra clicks to go into Settings and adjust what you want).

As others on Reddit note, this is sort of drafting some ideas over from PowerToys (the Run tool), and something I've previously argued is that Microsoft should port over some of the functionality in that suite of utilities so it's in Windows 11 by default. Maybe that's starting to happen.

Even so, there are folks on Reddit who don't want search to be anything but an ultra-streamlined search (rather than offering the likes of actions). This Windows 11 user complains: "Why isn't the search bar just for searching? Why does it do a million other things on top of it?"

Of course, everyone's entitled to their own take, but I don't agree, and there is a lot of streamlining work going on here which Microsoft should be commended for, with the additions on top being useful in my opinion. Still, it just goes to show that the level of Microsoft hate out there is still palpable, and whatever the software giant does, it'll have its critics.

One of the most important moves with search that's just gone live in the most recent Windows 11 update is the introduction of the ability to turn off web results clutter. Again, that was a long time coming, but at least Microsoft is getting there… finally.

• Microsoft will block .msix and .msixbundle email attachments in New Outlook and Outlook Web
• Change aims to reduce malware delivery through application package files sent via email
• Organizations relying on these formats must explicitly allow them before rollout begins

Users of New Outlook for Windows and Outlook on the Web in Exchange Online will no longer be able to download email attachments of two file types: .msix, and .msixbundle, Microsoft has confirmed, saying it’s for the users’ own safety.

“To enhance security in Outlook on the web and new Outlook for Windows, we are updating the default list of blocked file types in OwaMailboxPolicy,” a newly released advisory reads.

“As part of this update, the .msix and .msixbundle file types will be added to the BlockedFileTypes list in the default OWA Mailbox policy and any custom policies created in your tenant.”

What are .msix and .msixbundle files?

MSIX is a file format for packaging and installing applications. It is similar to .exe and .msi installer since it contains files and information Windows needs to install an application. Microsoft introduced .msix as a more modern and secure way of distributing software, saying it comes with features that make installing and updating software more reliable.

MSIXBUNDLE is, as the name might suggest, the same but in plural. It can contain several versions of an .msix package in a single file. For example, a developer can bundle versions designed for different processor architectures (x64 and ARM, for example), and Windows will automatically install the correct one. Both formats are commonly used to distribute Windows applications, including apps delivered through the Microsoft Store.

How big of a deal is this?

Apparently, not that big of a deal. Microsoft itself says that “most organizations are not expected to be affected by this update,” given the fact that these file types are “infrequently used.” However, they seem to be used frequently enough to warrant an update.

“This update is part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen security and help protect organizations from potentially unsafe file attachments,” Microsoft added.

Truth be told, sending application packages as email attachments is hardly the primary way businesses distribute software today. Employees usually do that through managed company portals, the Microsoft Store, package management tools, or direct downloads from software vendors. Therefore, we can assume that the majority of .msix and .msixbundle being sent through email could be malicious and weaponized.

General rollout will begin in early November 2026 and is expected to be complete by mid-November, the advisory reads. Exchange Online administrators who manage OWA mailbox policies are generally affected, as well as those who usually send or receive .msix or .msixbundle attachments in Outlook on the web or new Outlook for Windows Platforms and services. Obviously users of Outlook for the web, New Outlook for Windows, and Exchange Online, too.

So, in roughly a month, these two file types will be added to the BlockedFileTypes list in all OWA Mailbox policies across organizations, including the default policy and any custom policies created across tenants, preventing users from downloading them as attachments, or running them that way, at all.

Organizations that don’t rely on these two file types won’t need to do anything, but those that do should add them to the AllowedFileTypes property of their users’ OwaMailboxPolicy objects prior to rollout.

Defending email users from themselves

For years now, Microsoft has been adding different file types to the “blacklist”, in an effort to prevent users from downloading and running malicious attachments sent in phishing emails. As The Register reminds, in December 2023, the company disabled ms-appinstaller protocol handler by default, after it was abused to distribute malware.

Since then, Microsoft has also blocked .py (Python files), .ps1 (PowerShell files), and .cab (cabinet files). Some people found it surprising it took Microsoft this long to remember .msix and .msixbundle types, as well.

Via The Register

• Google is accused of destroying 300 hectares of forest for a data center
• Microsoft’s data center plans are ‘lipstick on a pig,’ a critic argues
• Some residents are pushing back against further data center plans

Big Tech firms like to tout their environmental credentials, positioning themselves as responsible stewards of the planet’s welfare. Yet you’d be forgiven for viewing those claims more than a little skeptically in the artificial intelligence (AI) era — after all, a slew of recent reports have suggested that such environmental posturing has a bad habit of withering away when there is money to be made.

Google, for example — whose sustainability web page is emblazoned with the headline “Making AI helpful for everyone, including the planet” — has been accused of destroying 300 hectares of Finnish forest (equivalent to roughly 500 football fields) to clear space for an AI data center before an environmental-impact assessment was finished.

Hanna Halmeenpää, chair of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, told the AFP news site that, based on satellite images, “we’ve seen that nature sites which should be preserved have also been logged.”

And Google isn’t the only Big Tech firm in hot water. Microsoft’s efforts to blend its data centers into the local area by restoring wetlands and gardens have met with criticism from those who say they merely disguise the data centers’ negative effects.

For example, Adrian Shelley, Texas director at nonprofit body Public Citizen, called Microsoft’s plan “basically lipstick on a pig.” Shelley also noted that the data centers would be powered by nearby pollution-heavy gas plants, adding: “I cannot really see any level of biomimicry investment that makes a gas plant a desirable neighbor.” Even Microsoft’s own estimates said its emissions were up 25% in 2025, “driven primarily by the expansion of our datacenter infrastructure.”

The AI pushback

Perhaps these cases of Big Tech firms finding themselves curiously unbothered by environmental matters should not come as too much of a surprise. After all, the likes of Google and Microsoft are publicly traded companies that are beholden to their shareholders above all.

Many citizens are pushing back against the AI gold rush and its attendant data center expansion. In Texas, for example, Taylor resident Pamela Griffin is fighting plans to turn a plot of land near her home into a data center, arguing that a 1999 deed reserved the space to be used as parkland — something she says has not been honored.

Clashes like this are becoming increasingly common as local residents are resisting attempts to turn land over to AI usage, citing noise pollution and environmental degradation, among other concerns.

And as long as Big Tech companies feel there are fresh riches to be made from AI, that’s likely to continue.

• 16-year-old bug hunter gained admin access to Microsoft's internal Titan analytics service through an unsigned login token that the service never checked
• From there, an estimated 17.3 trillion stored rows and a metadata table of about 25,000 accounts were reachable, though Faav says he only sampled data, avoiding dumping records or touching customer data
• Microsoft has hardened the service's security since and paid a $5,000 bounty, downplaying the trillion-row figure as a theoretical storage estimate rather than actual exposed customer information

A 16-year-old bug hunter who goes by 'Faav' logged into Microsoft's internal Titan analytics platform using a token that no real credentials should have produced, and from an administrator's seat, he could see an estimated 17.3 trillion stored rows and a metadata table listing roughly 25,000 accounts.

Microsoft paid him $5,000 and has since closed the hole, prompting him to detail his findings online even as he describes the impact as hypothetical rather than a consequential breach.

He said the way in was a single missed check, which let him access a system that should otherwise have been locked to Microsoft staff behind a VPN.

A simple mistake that could have catastrophic in the wrong hands

Microsoft's Titan sits behind a "VPN required" page meant to keep its web interface to Microsoft staff, but its API was still reachable through an Azure Cloud Services host, and the Swagger file describing that API listed four access routes.

Three demanded Azure AD authentication. One, "/v2/Query", did not, and it accepted raw SQL, giving Faav a way in. He wasn't moving blind either; to learn what tables to ask for, Faav pulled 2023 snapshots of Titan's pages from the Wayback Machine and recovered an archived Apache Superset configuration listing 56 table definitions.

The deeper flaw was in how the service read login tokens. As Faav explained, Titan validated the contents of a JSON Web Token- the tenant, audience, application ID, and user- but never verified the cryptographic signature that is supposed to prove the token is genuine, offering the analogy of a hotel where every door has a working keycard reader but any keycard opens any room, making it essentially an ineffective check at best.

He submitted an unsigned token, and then, after ten days of failed logins, stopped treating the "upn" field as a real email identity and set it to the plain string admin. Titan resolved that to local user ID 1, which carried the admin role, and ran his query.

The saga has an interesting AI subplot: Faav hunts with an orchestration bot he built called Antares, which he says was running OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude. Antares did the grunt work, enumerating subdomains, mapping the attack surface, and pushing the forged token through four layers of validation, one error message at a time.

It did get stumped, however, when it tried to find a UPN; it got stuck attempting only email addresses. That is not a problem per se for what was essentially a brute-force-style approach using the most probable email addresses, but it took manual intervention from the hacker to try 'admin' instead as an alternative to finally get access.

Admin access opened Titan's platform metadata database, which, according to his tally, held about 25,000 account and email records, roughly 18,000 employee email records, 15,000 organization records, and tens of thousands of dashboards, charts, and dataset definitions.

The disclosure moved quickly once he reported it on September 5 2026 as case 144051. Microsoft asked him to stop testing and hand over his IP address between September 6 and 8, locked the endpoint on September 9, and paid out on September 17.

There is an interesting caveat, however: Faav discloses that Microsoft had editorial control over his write-up, cutting sections and figures and reshaping how it described the impact before he published, so the most authoritative account of this bug has already been shaped by the company it embarrasses. None of this makes the bug small, however: one unverified signature that made every other access control in Titan pointless is a potential security nightmare, nipped in the bud by a teenager who has had success with similar bugs at Amazon, Google, and Adobe, in addition to a prior disclosure at Microsoft.

• Microsoft has admitted there's a bug in the latest Windows 11 update
• The September preview update causes some games and apps to crash
• According to some reports, this patch is also leading to sluggish performance, or even boot failures, so tread very carefully

Windows 11's latest update has a bug that's causing havoc with some PC games and apps, or worse still, according to reports that have found the upgrade breaking their entire system.

Windows Latest highlighted a post on the Windows health dashboard where Microsoft admits there's a problem with September's optional update, which was released almost two weeks ago now.

Bear in mind that this patch (KB5124010) is a preview update, then, but there certainly seem to be quite a few issues for gamers here based on some of the feedback on social media. These problems affect Windows 11 26H2 and 25H2 users, as well as those still on 24H2.

Microsoft tells us that: "Some applications which require the decoding of AC-3 (Dolby Digital) audio might close unexpectedly."

The company adds: "Affected applications may vary and can include games, media players, and certain productivity applications."

The bug may cause the game or app to completely fail to launch, or it might crash, and in some circumstances things could be fine until certain features are used, notably playing music.

At least Microsoft assures us that "many modern applications do not use Windows for this type of encoding and therefore will not encounter this issue," but clearly there are problems here.

There are reports on Reddit from gamers expressing their displeasure at witnessing crashing with, for example, Fallout: New Vegas, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Wardogs. In all cases, players found that the problems started after installing the September preview patch, and ceased when the update was removed.

What's more worrying is that some of the affected gamers are reporting more serious issues that include the system ending up broken with boot failures, or very slow performance for booting or shutting down the PC. Other complaints include general sluggishness on the desktop.

As one Redditor observes: "KB5124010 was a disaster on one of my Win11 25H2 PCs. It caused boot issues, very slow shutdown/search, and after uninstalling it the machine got stuck at the Asus logo and stopped booting. Clean reinstall in the end."

Another agrees: "I thought I was going insane with slow boot up. File Explorer issues. Just big grey boxes taking forever."

Analysis: this needs a quick fix

Microsoft says: "We are working on releasing a resolution for this issue in a future Windows update. We will provide an update when more information is available."

Well, this is a nasty one by all accounts, so Microsoft better muster all its bug squashing powers pretty swiftly. After all, while this is a preview update now, it becomes the full October update for Windows 11 a week tomorrow – so that's not far away at all.

Also, there are some folks who may have wanted to grab this optional update straight away because it packs a fix for a previous bug in the September (non-preview) update which broke a backup feature in Windows 11. So, they could have downloaded KB5124010 and been happy to receive this particular fix, only to find that their games or apps are suddenly in hot water (or worse). Sadly this kind of situation is all too common with Windows 11 these days.

Furthermore, this is a warning to be careful around preview updates, because seemingly the only cure for the bugs here is to uninstall the patch – there's no workaround. Also be aware that if you have selected the option to 'Get the latest updates as soon as they're available' in Windows 11 then you will get all these preview updates automatically, and possibly be hit by bugs like these.

That's why I'd be cautious about exercising this right, even if you are very keen to receive new Windows 11 features as soon as possible.

It's time for my quarterly report card on how Microsoft is progressing with its campaign to fix Windows 11. You may recall that my first report was published at the start of July, and I was largely full of praise given what happened to Windows 11 in those first three months.

So how is Microsoft faring now we're six months down the line? Here's what I've been impressed with in terms of what Microsoft has been tinkering with lately, but I'll also cover the missing parts of the puzzle that I really think the company needs to address with its effort to make Windows 11 better in 2026.

5 things Microsoft has got right

1. 8GB performance tuning

Do you have a PC with 8GB of RAM? You might find it provides a less-than-ideal experience running Windows 11, even though it's enough memory to run the OS per Microsoft's system requirements. Indeed, 4GB is officially the bare minimum, though I wouldn't recommend it.

However, this is changing, because back in August, Microsoft let us know that one of its goals in fixing Windows 11 is memory optimization for 8GB devices (and indeed for any RAM loadout). Microsoft said that the overall aim is: "Reducing Windows memory footprint to deliver a fast and responsive Windows experience across the PCs customers use every day."

This is a necessary move in general, but Microsoft has additional impetus to make 8GB work better, given the ongoing RAM crisis means laptop makers are increasingly falling back on this memory configuration (as 16GB is just too pricey).

It's absolutely key that Microsoft makes Windows 11 run more smoothly on leaner RAM configurations, and we're already seeing some evidence of performance improvements coming through — as well as faster loading for apps (not just Windows menus) — so that has to be a good thing.

2. Speed boosts elsewhere

Along with work to optimize Windows 11 for RAM usage, Microsoft also announced plans to speed up boot times. That includes not just a faster boot, but a more responsive login via Windows Hello—so we'll hopefully get to the desktop much faster in the future. (And to be fair to Microsoft, Windows 11 already boots nippily enough, generally speaking).

Microsoft is also making the Windows 11 setup process more streamlined and quicker, which doesn't hurt, either.

3. Search improvements

Windows 11's search has long been subpar, and thankfully Microsoft has recognized this and made moves to address some of the thornier problems.

This includes work to make search more useful overall — so it can find files with long compound names, handle typos better, and show possibly relevant results after you've typed only two characters — but the most important change is the ability to turn off web results.

These are the websites that appear in the array of results Windows 11 presents and just clutter up the list, getting in the way. Now you can turn them off, and also dump any Microsoft Store suggestions too. Search is becoming a much more streamlined and useful feature (as it should have been all along, true enough, but at least Microsoft has finally fixed the major bugbears here).

4. Right clicking the right way

The context menu, which appears when you right-click a file or folder, is another part of the Windows 11 interface that is getting a major upgrade.

Microsoft is decluttering the lengthy list of options to make it look cleaner, pruning a bunch of stuff in the default view of the right-click menu. Again, this is something that shouldn't have taken this long, but it's still good to see the move finally underway.

The right-click menu is also being tuned so it loads faster, and a welcome choice to revert the layout to how it appears in Windows 10 is also in the pipeline. Good stuff.

5. Bolstering privacy

This is a minor tweak, but an important one nonetheless, as Microsoft is finally letting Windows 11 users adjust privacy controls for each installed app.

Currently, this is only possible with apps from the Microsoft Store, as other (Win32) desktop apps have a single master toggle for allowing (or blocking) camera and microphone access. In other words, you can allow permission for everything, or no apps at all, with no choices in between, which is obviously not very useful. With the change coming in (currently in testing), you'll be able to adjust these privacy options for each app.

3 glaring oversights Microsoft has yet to address

1. Quality assurance

This one's pretty simple: Windows 11 still has too many bugs creeping in with annoying regularity. If it's not broken backup features, it's audio being torpedoed by a Windows update, and those are just the latest two glitches to have emerged last month.

I keep going on about the problems with bugs, and yes, I understand that Windows is a complex beast of an OS with a lot of potential hardware configurations to juggle, and a sprawling labyrinth of legacy features to maintain.

Nonetheless, the sheer level of bugs – some of them quite serious – we continue to witness just isn't good enough. Microsoft needs to take a long, hard look at its quality assurance and testing processes, and implement some changes – yet we never hear anything about this side of the OS.

This is the year of fixing Windows 11, and if there are two things that users would say in response to the question of what should be fixed, I'm betting that most would reply: the performance and the bugs. Microsoft is addressing those performance issues, as we've seen, but what about the sometimes eye-opening glitches that still make it into released versions of the OS?

2. Cut back on the promos

The good news is that Microsoft has relented in some areas when it comes to the 'recommendations' peppered throughout Windows 11, some of which aren't even thinly veiled suggestions but outright adverts. For example, the widgets panel is now a much calmer, less ad-infested place.

Microsoft still needs to push further on this front, though, and communicate better with its marketing department to ensure that ridiculousness like a full-page Harry Potter advert never happens again. Yes, that ad was served through the Bing Wallpaper app, which isn't part of Windows 11 by default, since you have to choose to install it, but it remains a prime example of the kind of promotional excess that shouldn't happen at Microsoft.

3. Getting local

I still want Microsoft to bring back the option to install Windows 11 with a local account, instead of forcing the OS to link to a Microsoft Account during setup. There were hints earlier this year that this might happen, but none of Microsoft's tweaks to the Windows 11 installation process so far has come close to this option.

Maybe that'll change, but given how far Microsoft has gone in the past to prevent workarounds for dodging the Microsoft Account requirement, I'm starting to think this won't be part of the fix Windows 11 effort, which would be a shame.

If Microsoft wants an easy crowd-pleaser, this would be relatively low-hanging fruit compared to the above two changes.

Sometimes the old ones really are the best, and Gears of War: E-Day is unapologetically retro. This third-person cover shooter could have easily fallen out of a time machine straight from the Xbox 360 era, were it not for its incredible graphical fidelity.

If you’ve played any Gears of War game, then you know exactly what to expect going in: intense combat encounters as human soldiers fight a desperate war against an invading mutant menace. Does E-Day reinvent the series? Not at all, though it does make some small changes by introducing somewhat more open levels and refining the weapon upgrade system introduced in Tactics.

That's far from a bad thing, though. Gears of War is an acclaimed series for a reason. Mowing down waves of baddies is still as fun as it ever was twenty years after the release of the first game, even if the story campaign feels a bit drawn out at times in between the bombastic set-piece moments, and the suite of competitive online multiplayer modes offers plenty of reasons to hone your skill and keep coming for more.

Back to the very beginning

E-Day does plenty to appeal, even if you haven’t played a Gears game before. It’s a prequel, set more than a decade before the events of the first game’s story, so it doesn’t require any prior knowledge to understand. It takes place on the titular ‘Emergence Day’, when the evil Locust army first emerged from underground and began its full-scale invasion of the series’ fictional Earth-like world. The story is a relatively small-scale one, focusing entirely on the initial first few days of the war in the city of Kalona.

The campaign is extremely strong in its opening hours, which really dial in on the more horrific and brutal elements of the franchise. Although still an experienced soldier, long-time protagonist Marcus Fenix faces a then-unknown threat that he and his companions, a ragtag group of his friend, a fellow soldier, Dominic Santiago, along with strangers Mags Carter and Lucas Reyes, are completely unprepared for.

There’s a real sense of chaos as the Locust tear through the city streets, with civilians running in panic, cars crashing, trains derailing, and huge sinkholes starting to tear up the floor. Weapons are limited at first, but you steadily gear up as the story unfolds. Experimenting with new assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, grenade launchers, and so on as you unlock them leads to a satisfying feeling of progression, further enhanced by a steady stream of unlockable upgrades for each and every one of them.

These range from basic stat buffs to more in-depth overhauls that fundamentally change how the weapons operate and can be paired together in interesting ways. The slow-to-reload lever-action Gnasher shotgun, for example, becomes an entirely different beast when you outfit it with a full-auto firing mode and the ability to replenish shells when stowed. It’s supremely enjoyable to experiment and, even without any upgrades, all of the guns are suitably punchy with satisfying sound effects that make each shot a joy.

E-Day introduces a small handful of large, more open environments to explore, with short side missions here and there. There’s plenty of guidance, and you’re always being funneled towards the next objective, so it doesn’t ever feel like you’re in a true open-world, but there are still plenty of collectibles to hoover up.

Their placement isn’t sophisticated, and you can easily find most of them without straying too far from the beaten track, which does seem like something of a missed opportunity.

Beauty in destruction

Luckily, you don’t need much encouragement to really take your time soaking in each and every environment, as they are absolutely gorgeous. This is without a doubt one of the most graphically impressive games ever released, with a level of fidelity that is simply leaps and bounds ahead of other recent releases.

The detail is truly staggering, with everything from sweeping views across the city to the individual items on sale in an abandoned convenience store realistically rendered and beautifully lit. I constantly found myself stopping to zoom in on every little thing, impressed with the sheer number of references to in-universe history.

All of this helps Kalona really feel like an actual place in a way few other video game settings do. The layout of its roads and public transportation network is totally believable, and your journey feels truly grounded, as you move through the game – even later on when the streets have been reduced to near-ruin.

There are some definite low points, though. This is by far the longest Gears of War campaign, taking me roughly 25 hours to complete while chasing every collectible and optional side mission, and a few hours in the middle should have been shaved off. Encounters are well-balanced in the opening and final acts with a good variety of foes and plenty of cover, but there are some sequences near the midpoint that just involve facing off a steady stream of overly tanky enemies in quite small arenas.

The shooting is so compelling that pumping them full of bullets for minutes at a time isn’t a dealbreaker; their removal would just have created a much tighter overall experience.

Continuing the fight

A Gears of War game wouldn’t be complete with a suite of multiplayer modes, and E-Day is no exception. The player versus player (PvP) deathmatch mode is excellent, challenging two small teams to face off and rack up kills with weapons from the campaign. Simplistic, yes, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not incredibly fun to blast away at others.

The player versus environment (PvE) games are more complicated, with 12 players divided into four squads tackling multiple objectives in a large open space to earn currency to spend on upgrades and defensive gear.

Bizarrely, the teams don’t interact with each other that much aside from the odd shared boss fight, so I don’t really see why the format needs 12 players, though any excuse for more of the strong combat is a good thing. There’s also a more traditional wave survival mode, which I can see becoming a favorite among friends looking for something more casual.

Throw in a wealth of unlockables, and you have a recipe for a good time even if, like the story campaign, it’s not anything revolutionary.

Should I play Gears of War: E-Day?

Play it if…

Don't play it if...

Accessibility features

Gears of War: E-Day has a wealth of accessibility settings, found in the dedicated accessibility menu. There are multiple menu narration options alongside the ability to customize the size of UI text, enable subtitles, show speaker names, and fully tweak subtitle background color and opacity.

Distinct content filters are present for gore, profanity, and online chat content, plus visual settings such as a color blind mode, high-contrast mode, and navigation aids.

How I reviewed Gears of War E-Day

I played Gears of War: E-Day on my Nvidia RTX 4090-powered gaming PC. With this rig, it could easily hit a rock-solid 75 frames per second (fps) at ultra settings while playing at 1080p and using Logitech peripherals: the newly announced X3 Superstrike mouse, Pro X2 Rapid keyboard, and Pro X3 Lightspeed headset.

I played the game for over 25 hours, during which time I completed the campaign and saw the vast majority of side content. I also dived into the multiplayer modes for a few hours to check them out and compare them to other online games.

First reviewed October 2026

• M365 EVP steps down from leading the change over relocation concerns
• Microsoft is seemingly pursuing a more AI-centric approach to software
• No direct replacement, but other execs tasked with "figuring out" the future

Ryan Roslansky, Microsoft's EVP for LinkedIn and Microsoft 365, has announced plans to leave the company after 18 years, with company CEO Satya Nadella being drafted in to co-author an announcement to employees amid a broader organizational shift.

A former employee of LinkedIn before its Microsoft acquisition, Roslansky later went on to become LinkedIn's CEO in 2020, gaining M365 and Teams responsibilities in 2025 and 2026.

But his decision to depart the company doesn't come in response to a disagreement or better offer – instead, Roslansky cites his family as a key reason behind ending a near two-decade stint at Microsoft.

High-profile Microsoft EVP and former LinkedIn CEO to leave after nearly two decades

The leader explained that leading the next phase of Microsoft 365 would require him to be at the company's Redmond HQ full-time, but being based in the San Francisco Bay Area with a youngest daughter who's just started high school and having other familial ties to the area, Roslansky ultimately decided not to pursue a career leading M365.

"I thought about this for a long time. It’s the right call," he wrote to employees.

While Nadella confirmed a series of leadership changes as part of the transformation, the bigger question is what's likely to happen to Office and Teams under new leadership. Roslansky already knew that leading the change on M365 meant "figuring out what Copilot, and the future of work, should look like as one ecosystem."

For now, though, Microsoft 365 and Copilot continue to occupy increasingly complex and overlapped positions. Copilot launched as a mostly in-app support tool, but things have turned the other way and Microsoft is now looking to frame Copilot as a working environment much like ChatGPT Spaces, with its office software built into that experience.

That could be why we're not seeing a new EVP taking Roslansky's place, with responsibilities instead being split between other execs.

While the future of Microsoft's office and collaboration software is broadly unknown, both Nadella and Roslansky's messages do at least imply that the company is pursuing a more AI-centric approach. The news also supports the argument for hybrid and remote working, with the company set to lose one of its highest-profile leaders due to office-working worries.

• Windows 11 26H2 is reportedly improving RAM consumption
• Some users say that they are seeing memory usage of between 1GB to 3GB less after applying the update
• Others see no change, mind, and we have to be cautious around these reports – although Microsoft is working to optimize RAM use in Windows 11

There's some evidence emerging that Windows 11's 26H2 update improves performance for some people, although we need to treat that idea with some caution at this stage.

Wccftech flagged up a post on Reddit where a Window 11 user observed: "Before the [26H2] Update, the On Boot RAM utilization was around 6.9GB (nice!), and after the update it is around 4.8-5GB. I guess there is some RAM utilization improvement after all!"

A number of other Redditors chip in with similar tales, such as: "I looked at mine and it is indeed lower than it used to [be] by around 3GB. Nice."

Another user says: "I noticed this as well. RAM utilization went down by about a gigabyte on my machine. Pretty good stuff."

Wccftech also points to a post on X from SoyITPro whose baseline RAM usage went from 9.1GB to 7.5GB, and again there are several other users who chip in to note that theirs has dropped by 1GB (or slightly more) after installing 26H2.

Before we get carried away with any positivity, though, there are those who've installed version 26H2 and are posting to say that there's no difference with their RAM usage compared to what it was before the update.

Notably some of those who are observing bigger drops in memory usage have larger RAM pools, so that's something to bear in mind if you have a lean 8GB loadout and are hoping for the best here.

Analysis: caution first

Of course, we need to be very careful about jumping to conclusions based a cluster of posts which are effectively anecdotal observations. And as noted, there's an equal amount of folks who are saying they don't see any difference with 26H2.

However, Microsoft let us know that it's working on making Windows 11 use less RAM at the start of August, so some of that effort may well have made its way into the OS – with installing the 26H2 update acting as a switch to flick that into action for more users. (As I discussed previously, while the 26H2 update doesn't do much, it will act as a trigger for the rollout of features that haven't yet reached some PCs).

There's a comment in the above Reddit thread from a user who notes that after installing 26H2 they find that "File Explorer responds immediately and it doesn't take its usual 5 seconds to respond" – and again, File Explorer is something that Microsoft has been honing. So, what's likely happened is that this work has been ushered through by the installation of the 26H2 update, which is why it's an upgrade worth having. Especially given that Microsoft has been doing a lot to Windows 11 this year as part of the major drive to fix the OS.

I'd still advise waiting a little while on installing version 26H2 of Windows 11, mind, just to see if any bugs are going to come crawling out of the woodwork. However, the upgrade seems clean enough thus far based on the initial lack of any major complaints around glitches.

Finally, as Windows Latest reports, it's worth noting that Microsoft is also busy shoring up memory issues with WinUI, which is the contemporary framework for the interface of Windows 11. This should help with overall performance not just for the desktop OS itself, but also apps which use WinUI.

• Microsoft has admitted cloud-based M365 data owned by licensed nonprofits has been deleted in a license-switching cock-up
• Microsoft retired its 365 Business Premium Grant license, advising nonprofits to move to the Microsoft 365 Business Basic for free
• The deleted data cannot be retrieved

Microsoft has admitted it accidentally deleted the data from an undisclosed number of nonprofits with retiring Microsoft 365 Business Premium Grant licenses. While advising the customers to switch to a different license for free and offering a retention and export window, the software behemoth somehow managed to lose their data, rather than retain it.

Worse, Microsoft has also admitted the lost data is irretrievable. So unless the organizations concerned had their own backups of the cloud-based data, the situation is irreversible.

All organizations with an expired Business Premium subscription are affected, but Microsoft has offered them a complementary “concierge service” to help get set up on their new Microsoft 365 Business Basic license – assuming they haven’t switched to Google Workspace.

How has this happened?

Microsoft 365 Business Premium Grant licenses were specifically for nonprofit organizations. It provided 10 free licenses for eligible organizations.

The announcement of their impending closure was made in early 2025. Any renewal on or after July 1 2025, would have been the last one. At the time, Microsoft issued an email to licensees:

“The Microsoft 365 Business Premium grant will be discontinued on your next renewal on or after July 1, 2025. Your licenses will expire on April 1, 2026. We will continue to provide up to 300 granted licenses of Microsoft 365 Business Basic and discounts of up to 75 percent on many Microsoft 365 offers to nonprofits, including Microsoft 365 Business Premium.”

Once a decision was made, the license should have been migrated to a Microsoft 365 Business Basic or Microsoft 365 Business Premium license, based on the demands of the organization concerned. Emails and documents should not have been affected.

Instead, data has been lost.

Microsoft’s vague mea culpa

According to reports, Microsoft has admitted that “data cannot be recovered” and is similarly unable to provide any list or spreadsheet or log of what was lost. This leaves nonprofit organizations – notably, those with low license requirements, so presumably operating on minimal funding – without access to the data they had stored within the Microsoft 365 OneDrive cloud.

They will also be without emails, potentially including details concerning contracts, fundraising, and other critical information.

Microsoft has expressed regret and attempted to manage the situation by offering the affected organizations a specialist to assist in setting up a new Microsoft 365 account. However, given the fact that the data has been lost, and there is no migration headache to endure, it's a good bet Google Workspace or even Zoho Workplace are stronger options.

• New Microsoft report shows cyber activity is increasing around the globe
• AI is reducing the timescale of attacks, but its also helping defenders detect intrusions
• The UK faces the most state-sponsored cyber activity in Europe

As AI becomes more widely available and lowers the barrier of entry into cybercrime, hackers are launching a record number of campaigns against consumers and businesses alike, experts have warned.

The United Kingdom is now fifth in the world for countries where customers are most frequently impacted by cyber threats, with the nation accounting for 3.8% of global activity, according to a new report from Microsoft.

The UK has also risen to the top as the most targeted country for nation-state and geopolitical cyber activity in Europe, facing 76 observed events in the past year.

AI reduces cyber activity timeline

Cybercriminals and state-sponsored actors are now capable of putting together sophisticated cyberattacks in minutes as AI compresses the attack lifecycle. Attackers no longer need to spend days mapping and planning an attack.

But the points of entry haven’t changed much. Phishing attacks jumped globally from 7% to 23% of incident-response intrusions year-over-year, showing that humans remain as the weakest link despite AI helping defenders improve detection.

Voice phishing is also showing significant growth as an attack vector. While workforces have been drilled on the dangers of email phishing, a fake Teams call from a colleague or IT helpdesk adds a sense of urgency. To that end, voice phishing has jumped 502% over the past year.

Ransomware is also on the rise around the world. The United States saw a 50% jump in ransomware detections, Germany increased 276%, and the UK saw an increase of 66%.

Attacks against state and local government, education, and critical infrastructure are also increasing. Research and academia is the most targeted, making up 38% of all cyber attacks against this sector, followed by transport at 22%, and government agencies and services at 13%.

“Security in the AI era is no longer simply about preventing individual intrusions. It is about ensuring institutions can operate effectively in an environment where risks are interconnected, threats move faster, and attackers remain hidden longer,” said Mike Yeh, Vice President, Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft.

“Public-private partnerships are also more important than ever for securing critical government infrastructure and developing the policies and regulations needed for emerging technologies.”

• Windows 11 26H2 is here and Microsoft says it's a "predictable and low-disruption update"
• There are users on social media who very much disagree, and are expressing their nervousness in varying degrees
• However, the 26H2 update could trigger the rollout of features that your PC hasn't yet received, so it might prove very useful

Windows 11's annual update has arrived, and while 26H2 doesn't bring in notable new features, it should trigger the rollout of functionality from earlier this year – if you still don't have some of those bits and pieces.

As Microsoft explains: "Windows 11 version 26H2 … delivers the latest Windows innovations with a streamlined update experience designed to minimize disruption and help you stay secure, productive, and up to date."

As with last year's update, this is what Microsoft calls a "small enablement package", meaning it's a minimal download with a quick installation that happens in a single reboot. All it's effectively doing is flicking a switch to turn on some preloaded code, with no actual new features delivered as such.

There's a key point to note here though, because as Microsoft says, this update "activates new features already included in the operating system through previous monthly servicing updates."

So, if you haven't yet had a feature rolled out to you – such as Microsoft's change to more speedily load apps, or the ability to reposition the taskbar, or the various changes for the Start menu – applying the 26H2 update should ensure that anything missing reaches your PC.

It's also worth bearing in mind that installing a new version of Windows 11 extends your support timeframe (through to October 2028 in the case of 26H2).

Analysis: skeptics aplenty

I say that installing version 26H2 should mean that any missing Windows 11 features are enabled on your PC, because obviously there's no guarantee, but if you've been hankering after a particular piece of functionality, there's a good chance you'll get it by applying this upgrade (certainly with older features, anyway).

As ever, though, it's never a great idea to rush to download any update, at least in my opinion, because of the danger that some unforeseen bug has crept in. Microsoft talks about this update being small and "designed to minimize disruption", and it should be a clean enough installation in theory, but people have been burned before – and the reaction on Reddit shows that quite clearly.

Posting in response to Microsoft calling 26H2 a "predictable and low-disruption update", one Redditor summed up the broad feeling in the thread by saying: "Well, now I'm really suspicious." Another poster simply says: "Uh oh."

And there are countless jokes or sarcastic barbs about how 26H2 will be just great because AI coded it, such as: "Don't worry they told Copilot not to make any mistakes with this update."

Another Redditor takes a similar attitude to myself: "I'll wait 3 weeks and then see what the situation looks like before updating."

There's no need to jump right on this update, so it just seems prudent to hold fire for a short while and see if any annoying incidents happen that move the needle on the glitch-o-meter.

Let's hope not, and then at some point later in October, you can apply version 26H2 and with any luck you'll get any features that have missed out your PC in Microsoft's rollout schedule. Speaking of which, it's notable how many more folks are complaining about Windows 11 being very slow to deploy new capabilities this year, but that said, you can't exactly blame Microsoft for being cautious given that bugs remain a big problem for its desktop OS.

Slowing down to a treacly pace with feature rollouts isn't exactly an ideal solution, though, is it? Microsoft needs to address some more deep-seated issues with its testing processes here (and no, I won't shut up about this until something is actually seen to be happening at the company in this regard).

• Home puts chats, delegated work, and Office documents inside one interface
• Code lets non-programmers describe software and have Copilot build it
• Autopilot can continue recurring work without waiting for another instruction

Microsoft has introduced a redesigned version of its Copilot AI platform which claims to combine chat, delegated work, and coding tools into a unified application experience for users.

The company says the update is meant to let individuals and organizations scale artificial intelligence across everyday tasks and long-term projects.

Three new capabilities anchor this release, including Home, Code and Autopilot, each aimed at a different kind of work.

Home brings Chat and Cowork together

The Home tool brings together two existing modes, Chat for quick questions and Cowork for tasks users delegate entirely, under one shared starting point.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint now operate inside this same interface, letting users draft documents, budgets, and presentations without switching applications.

In these documents, Copilot is now grounded in Fabric IQ, pulling context from more than 20 million semantic models built in Power BI.

Edits made by colleagues or by the assistant itself appear in real time, so progress stays synchronized across a shared file.

A new plugin registry will let organizations manage Microsoft, partner and custom-built plugins from one central catalog starting this month.

Independent developers and partners can also publish plugins once for use across multiple Copilot surfaces under the new registry arrangement.

The Code tool allows non-programmers to describe an app, tracker or dashboard in plain language and have it built automatically.

This feature runs on the same underlying technology used in GitHub Copilot and can be hosted within a company's own systems.

Autopilot operates without constant prompting

Autopilot, the third addition, is a persistent agent capable of completing recurring work without needing a new instruction each time.

It can run supplier reviews or similar multi-step processes, build schedules, contact stakeholders, and follow up on outstanding items independently.

Because it operates continuously in the cloud, work can continue late at night or whenever a person's attention shifts elsewhere.

A related feature called Today, entering private preview in October, will summarize missed messages and pending tasks across mail and chat.

Microsoft is also tying spending controls to these tools through a system it calls FinOps for AI, letting administrators track usage.

Administrators can set spending limits, approve credit requests and restrict which AI models different teams are permitted to use each month.

Everyday tasks like quick answers or first drafts run on a fixed-price subscription, while agentic features use usage-based billing.

Code, Cowork and Autopilot all fall under this usage-based pricing model, alongside frontier models Microsoft refers to as Astra and Fable.

Home and Code are set to roll out through Microsoft's Frontier program within weeks, and Autopilot enters private preview by month's end.

Microsoft has not released independent data showing how widely the three features are being adopted, how accurate they are, or how much time they actually save.

• DARPA will now test Microsoft's controversial quantum hardware inside a dedicated Maryland facility
• Majorana 2 uses a different approach to tackle quantum computing's stubborn error problem
• Microsoft is putting its topological quantum claims under independent government scrutiny

Microsoft has opened a 15,000 square foot quantum research center inside the University of Maryland's Discovery District, a year after the project was first announced.

The facility gives the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) physical access to Microsoft's latest topological quantum system for independent testing.

Previously, DARPA and other outside researchers could only test Microsoft's hardware through cloud-based remote access, making this the first time an external agency will evaluate its topological hardware on-site.

DARPA gets hands-on access to Majorana 2

The system installed for testing includes qubits built on Majorana 2, Microsoft's second-generation topological quantum computing chip.

Topological qubits are designed to reduce the burden of quantum error correction compared with other existing qubit approaches currently in use.

Quantum computers remain highly sensitive to environmental noise, meaning useful systems must detect and correct errors repeatedly while calculations are underway.

Majorana 2's material stack replaces aluminum with lead, a substitution Microsoft says improves overall performance and stability.

The chip has drawn criticism from some scientists, who remained skeptical of Microsoft's earlier performance claims, but Microsoft says the delivery to DARPA may help address that skepticism by opening its hardware to an outside testing team which brings expertise across hardware, control systems, software, and applications, according to the company.

Microsoft describes independent access as a necessary step toward assessing whether its approach can produce an economically relevant quantum computer.

The quantum computing industry does not have a broadly useful, fault-tolerant machine that consistently outperforms classical computers on commercially important work.

DARPA's evaluation falls under the Underexplored Systems for Utility-Scale Quantum Computing program, part of its broader Quantum Benchmarking Initiative.

That wider initiative aims to determine whether competing quantum computing approaches can produce commercially useful machines by 2033.

"DARPA is an ideal partner for our work because its test and evaluation team brings expertise across the computing stack," Microsoft said in a blog post.

A shared space for training and industry partners

Beyond the DARPA testing area, the center includes a hands-on quantum hardware makerspace built for students, researchers, and career changers entering the field.

Seven companies have joined this effort so far, including AMD, Intel, Bluefors, IQM, Riverlane, Quantum Motion, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Fermilab's involvement also extends into a collaboration exploring how its Quantum Instrumentation Control Kit could support broader quantum education efforts.

In the makerspace, visitors will assemble small but functional quantum systems using parts sourced from several leading hardware and computing companies.

Microsoft credits Maryland's Capital of Quantum Initiative, led by Governor Wes Moore, with funding the renovation of the original Discovery Center building.

The Maryland facility will also let prospective partners test how their own technologies work with Microsoft's broader quantum platform.

Hardware engineers can use the space to integrate machines or components, while developers explore possible applications.

Microsoft's strategy centers on supporting multiple quantum hardware types through one shared software and infrastructure layer.

• An F-35B and Ferrari SF90 will race at Grottaglie Air Base
• Barone's tuned Ferrari hits 330 km/h across the 500-meter sprint
• The jet completes its takeoff exactly as the race course ends

The Italian Navy has organized an unusual matchup between one of its F-35B fighter jets and a Ferrari SF90 sports car.

Set for October 11 2026 at the Grottaglie air base in southern Italy, the event pits vertical takeoff aircraft against Formula-tuned horsepower.

Fabio Barone, who holds seven speed records in Ferrari vehicles, will drive the car during the contest.

A runway built for landing, not racing

The first race covers 500 meters along an aluminum runway typically reserved for F-35B landing approaches at the base.

At that distance, the jet will complete its takeoff just as the course ends. Barone said his Ferrari normally accelerates from zero to 100 km/h in 2.8 seconds under standard settings.

With specialized engine adjustments applied for the event, that time drops slightly to 2.6 seconds flat. Over the full 500-meter stretch, the car is expected to hit 330 km/h before finishing.

"With that acceleration, I will face 2.2g, meaning 140kg of pressure" said Barone, adding the jet will likely start more slowly but carries far greater raw power overall.

A longer second race stretches across 2.8 km, combining both asphalt and aluminum surfaces along the runway.

After the first 500 meters, the aircraft will take flight and finish the course airborne. It will fly roughly 20 meters above the ground for the remainder of that longer race.

The F-35B and FS90 will share a single runway only 35 meters wide, and driving at high speeds over the aluminum plates could destabilize the car's handling

Echoes of a Formula 1 stunt from 2003

Races between military jets and race cars are not without precedent in Italy, dating back over two decades.

In 2003, Formula 1 driver Michael Schumacher raced a Ferrari against an Italian Air Force Eurofighter jet at Grosseto air base (see main picture) in a contest which drew a crowd of roughly 50,000 spectators to watch the two machines go head-to-head.

The Eurofighter won two of those races, covering 900 and 1,200 meters, without ever leaving the ground.

Schumacher still won a shorter 600-meter sprint, reaching 294 km/h and finishing the course in 9.6 seconds, beating the jet by two tenths of a second, despite the aircraft's clear power advantage.

Barone has his own history staging similar stunts involving military hardware and Ferrari engineering, having previously driven a Ferrari along the flight deck of the Navy's Trieste carrier vessel, reaching 164 km/h across roughly 200 meters before braking hard to avoid going overboard.

Barone said the appeal of racing a fighter jet comes from doing something genuinely unusual in public view.

"Everyone can race against another car, and this is a chance to put on a show," he said, citing Schumacher's 2003 run as inspiration.

Public stunts pairing military aircraft against sports cars tend to favor spectacle over strict competitive fairness.

Whichever machine crosses the finish line first, the event mainly serves as a marketing moment for both the Navy and Ferrari.

Via DefenseNews

• Excel cells used to just be for one value – but multi-value lists are soon to be supported
• Windows and Mac users can now try it out in beta
• You'll still have to specifically insert a list

Microsoft Excel has just seen one of the biggest updates to its cell architecture since launching, as users can now add multiple values into one single cell.

Until now, users have been unable to add comma-separate text, such as lists, into one cell, but a helpful update to the spreadsheet software is about to change that forever, with Excel not only seeing it as one text string, but also understanding that each item in a list is a separate value.

Introducing lists, arrays in cells and nested arrays as new features, Excel Senior Product Manager Jake Armstrong explained: "You can keep those values in one cell, while also keeping them separate for filtering, calculation and more."

Excel cells can now hold multiple values, like lists

Crucially, Excel won't suddenly start behaving like Word overnight, and users will still need to handle some very basic setup to create a list by inserting it from the menu. Commas and semicolons will then go on to denote a list within a single cell, allowing other core Excel functions like filtering to still work.

At the same time, Microsoft is also adding array and nested array support to single cells and four new functions – FLATTEN, HAS, HASANY and HASALL – to interact with them.

For now, though, these updates are rolling out to Microsoft Excel for Windows and Mac Beta Channels, so they're not yet generally available across the board. As such, there are some known issues involving conditional formatting, charts, find & replace and more.

More broadly, Microsoft's Excel roadmap is filled with plenty of other exciting upgrades for Excel as the spreadsheet software continues to transition into far more than just a basic number-handling tool – Microsoft knows that more and more users are using it for complex text entries, via AI and coding interactions, and the roadmap is evidence that Excel is adapting accordingly.

• Microsoft pledges $10 billion to support the Middle East's technological ambitions
• A $400m subsea cable expansion is also in the works
• The company stressed push for its educational support schemes

Microsoft has revealed plans to spend more than $10 billion in the Middle East between now and 2030, spread across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.

Although the company already has substantial infrastructure already rooted in the region, including cloud regions for the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, it hopes that further investment will help increase regional access to its cloud and AI tools.

Microsoft President Brad Smith noted the region's ongoing digital transformation, appearing to also acknowledge the impacts of geopolitical conflicts. "We will build on the work we have done to stand by these countries’ governments and people through a period of significant challenges," Smith wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft invests $10bn to support Middle East technological transformation

The company also announced a series of initiatives that will fall under the $10 billion plans, including expanding cloud and AI infrastructure, improving local digital resilience, strengthening cybersecurity and backing educational schemes.

"Our responsibility is not only to invest in the technology that enables that progress, but to help provide the digital resilience, security and continuity it depends on," Smith added in another post.

Naturally, clean energy generation and a close eye on both water consumption and replenishment are core to the company's upcoming projects.

On the resilience front, Microsoft plans to invest a further $400 million in subsea and terrestrial cables by the end of the decade, building on top of its existing SeaMeWe-6 subsea cable which has points in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Microsoft is just one of the 16 companies that look after the cable, which stretches from Singapore to France.

In a bid to pacify job concerns, Microsoft also asserted that it will upskill more than 4.2 million people across the Middle East by 2030 – around 8% of the four countries' combined populations (but a bigger percentage if you only consider working citizens).

• Microsoft had blocked posts that used the term 'Microslop' on its Copilot Discord channel
• This was a "temporary anti-spam measure," apparently
• The policy is no longer in place, but if Microsoft thinks the word will die off, that seems highly unlikely

Microsoft is apparently letting go over the 'Microslop' affair and is no longer policing its Discord channel to block the term.

You may recall that at the start of this year, the Microslop nickname came about after a comment from Microsoft's CEO – relating to 'AI slop' – and the company cracked down on the word by blocking posts that used it on the Copilot Discord channel.

Windows Latest noticed that this is no longer the case, and the term is now being openly used in the general chat channel. Searching for 'Microslop' produces over 200 results in posts that go back weeks.

In short, Microsoft has moderated its moderation, come to its senses, and realized that cracking down and censoring in this manner is only going to inflame passions against AI, if it achieves anything.

I should make it clear that Microsoft has never said anything official on this matter, in terms of admitting any ban in the first place, let alone the lifting of it. Windows Latest reports that it did hear from Microsoft back at the time, though, and was told that the filtering was a "temporary anti-spam measure" rather than a permanent policy. It seems this is indeed the case.

Analysis: Streisand effect

The writer of the Windows Latest article further observes that they've noticed that on Reddit, X, and Windows forums, there are fewer mentions of the Microslop term these days. It happens "much less often" we're told.

I'm not so sure about that. I still see Microslop mentioned with some regularity, although I concede that the popularity of the term has diminished. This is a subjective matter, of course, and it may reflect that I visit more negative posts about Windows 11 than the Windows Latest writer has done in the past few months – who can say?

The writer acknowledges that the "criticism is still very much there" in terms of 'AI slop' in Windows 11, but that it has died down since Microsoft started fixing the OS, and made some moves to minimize the presence of AI in certain areas.

I think what Microsoft has done so far is more about not mentioning or actively pushing AI, rather than stripping it out of Windows 11, although it's true some work has been done on the latter front. It doesn't amount to a whole lot, though, in the grand scheme of things.

There has been a change of attitude, yes, but that was absolutely necessary considering the whole 'fix Windows 11 campaign' was embarked upon after Microsoft was blasted for focusing on adding AI trimmings to the system rather than getting the fundamentals right with the OS.

I still see a lot of chorusing of 'Microslop' particularly when a Windows 11 bug emerges. Commenters are very quick to jump on Microsoft and fire criticisms along the lines of 'this is what you get when AI does your coding', and the term Microslop is inevitably included in these kinds of threads. (Microsoft has admitted that it uses AI for coding to a substantial extent, and Windows 11 users won't let the firm forget that in a hurry).

I personally don't think the term Microslop is going anywhere, and it'll be hanging around Microsoft's neck for the rest of the company's existence in all likelihood. While it's obviously a positive step that any 'temporary' censorship has been rescinded, it's a bit late now. Any attempt to curtail negative talk about AI was always only going to further highlight grievances, cause more bad feeling, and yet more damaging chatter.

As one Redditor put it: "How many times do companies need to learn about the Streisand effect?"

• Diablo 4 game director Brent Gibson says, "it's about damn time" the game comes to Nintendo Switch 2
• He says there were moments when the team thought it "impossible," but they managed to overcome the issues
• Gibson admits there are some "concessions," but they're barely noticeable is very happy with the result

Diablo 4 is finally available on the Nintendo Switch 2, and while porting the game to the handheld console came with some hurdles, game director Brent Gibson is quite pleased with it.

"First off, it's about damn time," Gibson said during a press Q&A at BlizzCon that TechRadar Gaming attended. "We've wanted it on the Switch for a very long time. It's a big game. I think we've had moments where [we thought] it's impossible. There's no way we could do it. But the team that took that on? Boy, did they do an amazing job."

Gibson went on to explain how the team optimized the game for handheld, admitting that there were some issues it had to work around, but overall the team delivered, and it was worth the wait.

"The concessions we had to make are barely noticeable. I'm so impressed," he said. "There are some things that we have to do for performance, obviously, but I think the expectation once you're going to handheld, we nailed it; it's locked.

"It's fluid. It's easily readable. I love the Switch's screen, and so it pops very nicely on that screen. It was challenging. But ultimately, I think it was worth the wait for how much work we had to put into getting it in there."

Blizzard just kicked off Diablo 4 - Season of Hell's Legacy, the game's 15th season, which arrived on September 15. Fans can also look forward to Diablo 5, which is slated to launch in 2029.

However, Gibson has put concerns to rest and stated outright that Diablo 4 players don't need to worry about the game's future because of Diablo 5's announcement.

"If you're wearing the sign in the middle of Times Square that says 'The End is Nigh', the end is not nigh," he said. "We have a lot coming."

• A bug in Windows 11's September update broke File History
• Microsoft admitted the backup feature was scuppered and has apparently now fixed it
• However, the cure is in an optional update, so it might be best to wait for the full release of the upgrade next month

Microsoft has admitted that Windows 11 has a bug that messes up a backup feature in the OS, although a new optional update fixes it (but not quite fully).

Windows Latest reports what's been a slightly odd tale in that the bug in File History has been kicking about since the September update first emerged over two weeks ago, but Microsoft didn't acknowledge it — even though it was a widely reported issue.

File History is a feature that enables you to keep files backed up to an external drive, and while it doesn't see a whole lot of use these days, it's obviously important for those who do still avail themselves of the functionality.

Microsoft informed Windows Latest that: "After installing the September 2026 Windows security update KB5124008, some customers using File History, might be unable to create or update backups. File History is used to back up files to an external drive or network location."

The good news here is that the latest September update, which is optional — it's a preview of the October update in fact — does fix this bug, as confirmed by Windows Latest, but it seemingly doesn't fully iron out every issue with File History.

Windows Latest noticed a post on Microsoft's Learn portal from a user who confirms that the new September preview update does mean that File History is working again and making backups, but there still appears to be an issue with the 'Run now' ability and problems with synchronization of save times therein.

However, this isn't a bug caused by Microsoft's recent work on Windows 11, and in fact this glitch dates back to a Windows 11 update in July 2026.

Analysis: update skeptics

At least File History appears to be cured of this latest feature-breaking bug, and hopefully the other problem highlighted on Reddit will be fixed before too long.

You don't necessarily want to download an optional update, of course, as it may bring in other bugs — after all, it's still a beta. The safest bet is to wait for the October update to arrive in two and a half weeks (on October 13) and then install that as the remedy for your File History blues (while temporarily keeping backups a different way, manually or on OneDrive, in the meantime).

Windows 11 bugs have remained a problem throughout 2026, and every year before for that matter (particularly with the 24H2 release). Microsoft still needs to do better in this regard considering this is one of the thornier issues that has continually dogged its OS, which it's busy fixing this year.

The trouble with the long-running overly buggy nature of Windows 11 is that it's making some users hold off updating the OS, and I don't mean for just a week or two. (I'd advise a week's breathing room in general myself, just to see if there are any major bugs or nasty showstoppers with any given update).

For example, this Redditor notes: "I am once again advising everyone to disable Windows updates. Let people test the bugs for a few months, then update. Your PC isn't gonna implode because you are 3 months behind on Windows 11 versions."

This was in reply to a comment which simply asked: "Is there a Windows 11 core feature that hasn't been broken at least twice since release?"

Cynicism prevails around Windows 11 updates in many corners of the web these days, and I think this is something Microsoft needs to act on. Yes, Windows is a very complex operating system that needs to cope with umpteen PC and device configurations, and a labyrinth of legacy features that must be maintained for a niche set of customers, but still — that's ultimately not an excuse.

Something needs to be done to improve QA and testing, otherwise it's going to be difficult to declare that 'Windows 11 is fixed' next year, which is Microsoft's goal (presumably).

• A regular leaker says the chips for the PS6 and Xbox Helix have been 'taped out', meaning the design is final for manufacturing
• The leaker claims 56 TFLOPS of power for the Xbox Helix and 40 TFLOPS for the PS6
• That compared to 16.7 TFLOPS on the PS5 Pro and 12 TFLOPS on the Xbox Series X

The launches of next-gen console hardware from Sony and Microsoft are edging ever closer, and the latest rumor doing the rounds suggests that the chips for both the PlayStation 6 and what's being called the Xbox Helix are now 'taped out' — as in, finalized for submission to chip manufacturers.

This comes from well-known tipster KeplerL2 (via VideoCardz), who also predicts 40 TFLOPS of performance for the Sony hardware and 56 TFLOPS for the Microsoft hardware. That's Tera Floating-Point Operations Per Second, or how many trillions of calculations a processor can do in a single single.

While TFLOPS gives us some indication of how powerful these consoles will be, they're not the whole story, as architecture choices and memory bandwidth will play significant roles too. That said, it seems the Xbox console may have a major edge in terms of raw power — although the Xbox Series X had a 20% edge on TFLOPS over the PS5 back in 2020 too, which didn't necessarily translate into better-looking games.

Direct comparisons with current generation consoles are tricky, as so many other variables will be changing as well as TFLOPS figures, but TweakTown reports that the PS5 delivers 10.28 TFLOPS, the PS5 Pro offers 16.7 TFLOPS (typical) and 18.05 TFLOPS (peak), and the Xbox Series X can hit 12 TFLOPS.

But how much will it cost?

Both the Xbox Helix and the PlayStation 6 are expected to be based on the AMD Zen 6 family of CPUs and the AMD RDNA 5 GPU architecture, if previous leaks are to be believed, and there has been talk of 30GB of RAM being packed inside the Sony console (no RAM predictions yet for the Microsoft one).

Judging by the ongoing discussion on Reddit, gamers aren't placing too much stock in these leaked TFLOPS numbers, as they aren't guaranteed to convert directly into gaming performance. The bigger debate seems to be over how much Sony and Microsoft are going to charge for these next-generation machines.

There are mentions of "an inevitably massive price hike" while another user is prepared to "say goodbye to affordable console hardware" in this generation. As we've already seen with the Steam Machine, the ongoing shortage of memory chips is driving up prices across the board, including in gaming hardware.

As for when we might actually see these consoles, don't hold your breath: experts say a launch before 2028 is unlikely, even if the design for the main processor chips have now been finalized. We'll just have to fill the time exploring everything Grand Theft Auto 6 has to offer in the meantime.

• Microsoft has revealed a new Surface Pro 12-inch tablet and Surface Laptop 13-inch
• Both consumer devices are built around a 6-core Snapdragon X2 Plus processor
• They go on sale on October 13, 2026, starting at $1,149.99 / AU$1,999 for the Surface Pro and $1,199 / AU$2,099 for the Surface Laptop

It seems like Microsoft might be getting its mojo back for its Surface line-up of products, with Brett Ostrum, Corporate Vice President, Surface Devices, announcing at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit that the company will be releasing a new Surface Pro 12-inch tablet and Surface Laptop 13-inch. Both will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, which explains the venue choice. (I’m sure it had nothing to do with the fact that the Snapdragon Summit is held in Hawaii).

According to Microsoft, the two new Surface devices with Snapdragon X2 Plus CPUs will be up to 17% faster for Office workloads, up to 18% more battery efficient, and offer over 60% faster graphics performance.

As these are Microsoft products, there is also the now-customary boasting about AI performance, with the Qualcomm Hexagon NPU offering 80 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) resulting in a claimed 95% faster local AI performance.

The Surface Pro 12-inch (2026) is a Windows 11 tablet built around the 6-core Snapdragon X2 Plus processor, partnered with either 16GB or 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and 256GB or 512GB storage. The 12-inch LCD display has a resolution of 2196 x 1464 and a refresh rate of up to 90Hz. The screen of this new model is, according to Microsoft, 25% brighter than the previous model, and there’s a new black color. Microsoft estimates around 15.5 hours of local video playback and 13 hours of web use on a single charge. It’ll start at $1,149.99 / AU$1,999 (around £900) and goes on sale on October 13, 2026.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch (2026) features the same 6-core Snapdragon X2 Plus chip and is available in the same memory and storage configurations as the Surface Pro. The 13-inch touchscreen has a resolution of 1920 x 1280 and a refresh rate of 60Hz, which I’m not going to lie, is a bit disappointing in a laptop these days, although Microsoft claims the 500-nit display is 25% brighter than the last model.

It also has two USB-C (USB 3.2) ports and a USB-A port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Microsoft claims up to 22.5 hours of battery life, which if accurate is very impressive.

The Surface Laptop will start at $1,199 / AU$2,099 (around £920) and will also go on sale on October 13, 2026.

Ready to take on the MacBook Air?

Microsoft’s announcement of two new consumer Surface devices is definitely welcome. Surface Pro tablets and Surface Laptops used to be Microsoft’s flagship products and showcases for cutting-edge Windows features. They certainly felt like Microsoft’s attempts to create a MacBook Air. The problem is, they never reached that potential, and when Apple switched to using its own Arm-based M series chips in 2020, the gap widened even further.

Surface devices also had a larger than life cheerleader in the form of Panos Panay, who had a major role at Microsoft and whose passion for the Surface line-up, that he helped create, was infectious (even if that infection didn’t translate into sales). After Panay left Microsoft for Amazon, it felt like the wind had been taken out of Surface’s sails, which wasn’t helped when Microsoft aimed recent Surface devices at commercial and business users, rather than mainstream consumers.

So, it’s good to see that these new Surface devices are firmly pitched at consumers, and the price points are around the same as the MacBook Air since Apple increased prices earlier this year. It also pits them against new Googlebooks, which are going on sale soon as well, and are priced similarly.

Will this mean Microsoft finally has a MacBook Air rival? While I’m glad it’s trying again, I’m not too sure. The Snapdragon X2 Plus is a decent mid-range chip, but the 6-core variant in the new Surface devices falls short of the 10-core CPU in the M5, especially as the M5 offers better single-core performance.

My main concern with the Surface Laptop is that the 1920 x 1280 screen just won’t compare to the display of the MacBook Air, which offers a 2560 x 1664 resolution for a much sharper image.

I’ve also seen the first five new Googlebook laptops, and they all come with higher resolution screens, and some also feature OLED.

The screen of the Surface Pro 12-inch (2026) is more promising, though if you want to use it as a laptop, you’ll need to buy a keyboard accessory, which adds to the price. However, it should still come in at under the price of Apple’s 13-inch iPad Pro.

So, I’m not entirely sure that these will be the MacBook Air/iPad Pro killers Microsoft needs them to be, but I’m glad Microsoft is at least trying again, and I could be proved wrong when we get the new Surface devices in for review soon.

• Microsoft, UK police, and partners disrupted EvilTokens PhaaS, arresting two suspects and seizing 200+ domains/sites
• EvilTokens used AI to scale device‑code phishing, compromising 12,000 inboxes across 10,000 organizations globally
• Platform ran like a startup with subscriptions, dashboards, and AI‑driven targeting; US victims hit hardest

Two people have been arrested, 50 websites were seized, and 150 domains disabled, in a joint operation against the infamous EvilTokens phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) kit.

In its report, Microsoft said the UK Metropolitan Police Service’s cybercrime team “arrested two men on suspicion of offenses connected with the alleged operation of EvilTokens.”

The two men, whose identities were not disclosed, are aged 32 and 38, and have been released on bail, subject to conditions while the investigation continues. Their digital services and other items have been confiscated, as well.

Among the partners are Health-ISAC, Cloudflare, Coinbase, OpenAI, Railway, SpyCloud, The Shadowserver Foundation, and TRM Labs. We don’t know if these arrests and takedowns will be enough to completely obliterate EvilTokens, or if the platform will continue to operate. Usually, criminal infrastructure is a lot less resilient to disruptions when arrests are made, compared to when law enforcement simply disables the hardware.

The tech startup of organized crime

EvilTokens has been turning heads for a little while now. The platform was first spotted in February 2026, rising quickly to become one of the most widely used PhaaS solutions out there.

It can be bought through Telegram for $1,500, after which there is a recurring $500 subscription cost. Cybercriminals use it to run large-scale, personalized phishing attacks: they can create spoofed websites, landing pages, and other credential-capture assets; they can create custom-tailored phishing emails, and can even grab session tokens, one-time passwords, and other codes designed to protect accounts against phishing, granting attackers access to people’s inboxes.

But what makes EvilTokens particularly impressive is its use of artificial intelligence. The platform comes with an AI assistant that can sift through the inboxes, suggest which targets are of high value, and even how to approach them. Attackers can conduct Microsoft Graph reconnaissance as well, mapping out organizational structure and permissions, keeping access and moving laterally throughout the target network.

Microsoft said it found evidence of large portions of EvilTokens being vibe coded, “with AI helping its creators build the platform itself.”

The researchers also found the platform drawing on capabilities from multiple AI models. Looking at the platform as a whole, it runs like a well-organized startup, with subscription pricing, customer support, management dashboards, and tools designed to move customers from account access toward financial exploitation.

According to Microsoft, EvilTokens facilitated business email compromise (BEC) campaigns that compromised more than 12,000 inboxes in more than 10,000 organizations worldwide. Victims are mostly in wholesale distribution, construction, and financial services, but those in real estate, higher education, and healthcare are not spared, either.

The victims are primarily located in the United States, with notable numbers found in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and France. Microsoft said affected customers were notified, and that the company “helped remediate compromised accounts and shared intelligence to support further defensive and investigative action."

Popularizing device-code phishing

Device-code phishing as an attack technique is not that new. More than a year ago, in February 2025, security researchers Huntress reported on Russian threat actors Storm-2372 deploying the same technique, and while it’s been steadily growing in popularity, it wasn’t until EvilTokens’ appearance that it really exploded.

The same researchers said, in June 2026, that EvilTokens was used to run 1,380% more device-code phishing attacks in 2026, compared to the same period last year.

“We’re seeing a clear maturation of the phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) market as threat actors increasingly integrate AI workflows into their product offerings,” Huntress said in a report.

“The result is directly observable in our telemetry: a 1,380% increase in device code phishing attacks detected between July–December 2025 and January–April 2026, with over 50% of those incidents linked to two major waves of correlated incidents.”

• Microsoft is rolling out an in-app browser for the Copilot app
• When you open links provided by the AI, they'll appear side-by-side with the chat
• While this is likely to prove a convenient feature for some, others have their doubts, and there's an ulterior motive of sorts in terms of pushing Edge

The Copilot app in Windows 11 is getting its own browser, which means that when you follow links provided by the AI, you'll stay within the confines of the app.

Windows Central noticed that Microsoft is set to roll out the in-app browser for the Copilot app on Windows 11 (and macOS), where it will open links in a panel to the side of the chat.

Normally, links would be fired up separately in the default web browser, but with this change, Microsoft aims to keep more activity within the Copilot app.

This feature has been in testing since early this year, and is available for admins to enable now, with a "broader rollout" happening in late November.

If you use the Copilot app, then, you can expect to see this ability appearing in a couple of months (or maybe a bit longer depending on the pace of the rollout).

Analysis: edging forward

Obviously, there is an aspect of convenience here, as you can peruse web pages that Copilot highlights right there in the app window. Some folks might like the idea, then, but on Reddit, the feedback that's been shared has been pretty negative.

Windows Central poses a question for the story headline, namely: "Will this upcoming update make Copilot your preferred browser on Windows 11?" And the Redditors who can't resist replying to that query are all overwhelmingly negative.

One reply says: "No. Copilot is a scourge that I avoid at all opportunities. Having a browser inside Copilot sounds like Hell."

Another states: "Definitely not. As it is, if I click a link in Copilot I have it open it in my actual web browser. The built-in browser would have to be really good to get me to change that."

Okay, so it's a loaded question and one that AI skeptics are more than happy to jump on and shoot down – but these aren't the people that Microsoft is considering here. It's introducing this for folks who use the Copilot app, who, obviously enough, aren't part of the anti-AI crowd who are very quick to fire flak at anything related to the topic.

On the other hand, this isn't something Microsoft's doing purely out of the goodness of its heart. It's a way to keep more activity within the Copilot app, as noted, and also another method of (indirectly) pushing the Edge browser. Because naturally enough, that's what the in-app browser is based on (what else would it be).

That doesn't mean the feature isn't useful, though, and if you like the sound of the in-app browser for Copilot, you've not got long to wait.