75 posts
The Hot Take: And the push beings it's fifth or sixth try for Windows & ARM....
Windows 11 on Arm has come a long way, but many reviewers and commenters fall back on horror stories of incompatibility that haven't been true for years.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Is this the beginning or Ai push back across the market that might include hardware soon?
Microsoft has started stripping Copilot branding out of Notepad in Windows 11, replacing the old Copilot menu with a more generic "writing tools" label. The AI features themselves aren't going away, but Microsoft seems to be backing off the heavy-handed Copilot branding and extra entry points. Windows Central reports: As promised, Microsoft is now beginning its effort to reduce and remove Copilot branding across Windows 11, with the latest Notepad update for Insiders outright removing the Copilot icon and phrasing. Now, the AI menu is simply called "writing tools," and maintains the same functionality as before. Additionally, Microsoft has also removed references to AI in the Settings area in Notepad. Now, the ability to turn on or off these AI powered writing tools are now listed under "Advanced features." This change is present in the latest preview build of Notepad which is now rolling out to all Windows Insiders. The app version is 11.2512.28.0, and you'll know you have it if you see the Copilot icon replaced with a pen icon instead. [...] For Notepad, it appears Microsoft has opted to replace the Copilot menu with something more generic. It's still the same functionally, but it's no longer leaning on the tainted Copilot brand. Of course, you can still easily turn off all AI features in Notepad if you don't want them. The Verge reports that the "unnecessary Copilot buttons" are also disappearing from the Snipping Tool, Photos, and Widgets. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Of course because the only browser is Edge, M$ doesn't recognize anything else.
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla is accusing Microsoft of stacking the deck against Firefox, arguing that design choices in Windows steer users toward Edge even when they explicitly choose another browser. According to Mozilla, parts of Windows still open links in Edge regardless of the default browser setting, including results from the taskbar search and links launched from apps like Outlook and Teams. Mozilla says this means Firefox often never even gets the opportunity to handle those links, which quietly shifts user activity back into Microsoft's ecosystem. The company also points to Microsoft's aggressive rollout of Copilot as another example of platform power being used to push Microsoft services. Copilot appeared pinned to the taskbar, arrived automatically on many systems with Microsoft 365, and even received a dedicated keyboard key on some laptops. Mozilla argues that when the maker of the dominant desktop operating system promotes its own browser and AI tools at the system level, it becomes far harder for independent browsers like Firefox to compete. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: This is good, as Windows 11 is just a pile of poop these days. I'm waiting on native support from game publishing houses, as I hate abstract/emulation layers. We still need the peripheral companies to publish apps to control all those RGB's on our systems and keyboards too.
Valve's March 2026 Steam Survey shows Linux gaming usage jumping to a record 5.33% share -- more than double macOS's 2.35%. Phoronix reports: Steam on Linux was never above 5% and easily an all-time high for the Linux gaming marketshare, especially in absolute numbers. It was a massive 3.1% spike in March while macOS also jumped surprisingly by 1.19% to 2.35%. The Steam Survey numbers show Windows losing 4.28%, down to 92.33%. Part of the jump at least appears to be explained by Valve correcting again the Steam China numbers. Month over month they report a 31.85% drop to the Simplified Chinese language use and English use increasing by 16.82% to 39.09%. Other languages also showed gains amid the massive decline in Simplified Chinese use. The latest numbers for March show around a quarter of the Linux gamers are running Steam OS. Due in part to the Steam Deck APU being a custom AMD product and the popularity of AMD hardware on Linux for its open-source nature, AMD CPU use by Steam on Linux gamers remains just under 70%. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: When you're pushing skinned version of the edge browser your native apps will start to show signs....
Microsoft is investigating a known issue that prevents some Classic Outlook users from sending emails via Outlook.com. [...]
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Whoa, now if publishing house start publishing native you might get my buy in.
Steam just released its March hardware and software survey, and it's clear that the PC gaming market is going through a massive flux as inflated prices force buyers into new (and old) areas.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Following intels steps on the Arc? Also, how much space are the pre-compiled shaders going to consume of diskspace?
NVIDIA has introduced a new beta feature called Auto Shader Compilation, or ASC, through the latest NVIDIA App update, and it targets a familiar pain point in modern PC gaming: long initial loading phases and shader compilation stutter in DirectX 12 titles.
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Update to a version greater than Control Center versions 25.07.21.01!
The GIGABYTE Control Center is vulnerable to an arbitrary file-write flaw that could allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to access files on vulnerable hosts. [...]
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: Trying to win customers over again as many are eyeing Linux alternatives. Only problem, I'm hearing things about Opensource possibly going to subscriptions just like others because coding for free doesn't help peoples bottom lines.
Weren't these supposed to be 'atypical'? Microsoft is preparing another out-of-band update to address its latest problematic update following reports of installation errors.…
Read the full articleThe Hot Take: ooof! Ai getting hyper competitive, we sure it wasn't industrial espionage?
Grady Martin writes: A security researcher has leaked a complete repository of source code for Anthropic's flagship command-line tool. The file listing was exposed via a Node Package Manager (npm) mapping, with every target publicly accessible on a Cloudflare R2 storage bucket. There's been a number of discoveries as people continue to pore over the code. The DEV Community outlines some of the leak's most notable architectural elements and the key technical choices: Architecture Highlights The Tool System (~40 tools): Claude Code uses a plugin-like tool architecture. Each capability (file read, bash execution, web fetch, LSP integration) is a discrete, permission-gated tool. The base tool definition alone is 29,000 lines of TypeScript. The Query Engine (46K lines): This is the brain of the operation. It handles all LLM API calls, streaming, caching, and orchestration. It's by far the largest single module in the codebase. Multi-Agent Orchestration: Claude Code can spawn sub-agents (they call them "swarms") to handle complex, parallelizable tasks. Each agent runs in its own context with specific tool permissions. IDE Bridge System: A bidirectional communication layer connects IDE extensions (VS Code, JetBrains) to the CLI via JWT-authenticated channels. This is how the "Claude in your editor" experience works. Persistent Memory System: A file-based memory directory where Claude stores context about you, your project, and your preferences across sessions. Key Technical Decisions Worth Noting Bun over Node: They chose Bun as the JavaScript runtime, leveraging its dead code elimination for feature flags and its faster startup times. React for CLI: Using Ink (React for terminals) is bold. It means their terminal UI is component-based with state management, just like a web app. Zod v4 for validation: Schema validation is everywhere. Every tool input, every API response, every config file. ~50 slash commands: From /commit to /review-pr to memory management -- there's a command system as rich as any IDE. Lazy-loaded modules: Heavy dependencies like OpenTelemetry and gRPC are lazy-loaded to keep startup fast. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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