This decision came last week when Daniel Stenberg, lead dev and creator of the project, made a pull request on GitHub to remove all mention of the program from the documentation. He set the end of January 2026 as the final date. Here's what he said:

Up until the end of January 2026 there was a curl bug bounty. It is no more.

 

The curl project does not anymore offer any rewards for reported bugs or vulnerabilities. We also do not aid security researchers to get such rewards for curl problems from other sources either.

 

We have concluded the hard way that a bug bounty gives people too strong incentives to find and make up "problems" in bad faith that cause overload and abuse.

 

We still appreciate and value valid vulnerability reports.

Stenberg told etn.se that AI slop and bad reports have been increasing so much that the team had to "try to brake the flood in order not to drown". The developer already had a history of publicly complaining about what he calls "AI crap" flooding the bug bounty program on HackerOne.

The project's maintainers, who have to read these AI-generated reports, struggle to make sense of them since most are nonsensical. Many AI tools lack the necessary code context to produce sound reports, which ends up distracting developers from legitimate issues that actually need fixing.

Eventually, the cURL instituted a policy that any reporter who submitted "AI Slop" would be banned from the program. That did not stop the horde of low-quality submissions. By mid-2025, Stenberg began to consider shutting down the program entirely to remove the financial motivation for submitting garbage.

The cURL bug bounty program has been around since 2019 and was managed through HackerOne. During its operation, the program paid out over $100,000 for valid security vulnerability reports.

Obviously, cURL is not the only project drowning in this sludge of AI-generated bug reports. Other projects that are currently facing this issue include the Python Software Foundation, React, and Apache Airflow.

You can check out Stenberg's original PR here.

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Posted Thursday 22 January 2026 at 4:51 am AEST (my time).

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One user, SPMech, posting to Microsoft Learn’s Q&A section, was using BforArtists, a fork of Blender, and experienced a total system lockup when changing Viewport Shading types. This has been happening since the user installed the latest KB update. Explaining their issue, SPMech wrote:

“Desktop system downloaded the recent security update KB5074109 (26200.7623).

 

When in BforArtists ver5. and change to any viewport shading type the PC locks up. Won't respond to any user input. No blue screen. I have tried uninstalling the update and BforArtists and, then reinstalled BforArtists then the update. Same result. So I have uninstalled and paused the update for now. Hopefully there is a fix from either Microsoft or BforArtists.”

There are no responses to the issue at the time of writing. However, because the system freezes completely, the issue could be due to a driver or graphics stack issue, not just the app crashing by itself. Microsoft or BforArtists could potentially fix the issue if they receive a report, but it seems like it has been caused by Microsoft’s latest round of patches as it started happening after the update.

In a second case reported on the same website, user Eva Kwon has been experiencing an immediate application closure upon login for payroll and remote-access applications. It is unclear if this is related to the Remote Desktop issues previously reported. The user was instructed to uninstall the latest update, however, this has so far been impossible to do, even from Safe Mode, which was recommended by an AI answer on the thread.

The update seems to be incredibly annoying for a number of users, hopefully Microsoft gets around to sorting out these issues in upcoming updates.

Has KB5074109 caused you any issues? Let us know in the comments.

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Posted Wednesday 21 January 2026 at 4:45 pm AEST (my time).

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Starting with Command Palette, the launcher is now much more customizable. You can select a custom background and a tint for a more personal touch. Next, Command Palette now lets you customize fallback ranking. In other words, you can specify priority for each command when typing your request.

Another big change for Command Palette is the ability to control PowerToys directly from it. Switch themes, toggle between FancyZones layouts, open settings, and a lot more. Additionally, Peek can now preview files and folders within Command Palette. A few extra changes include the following:

• Support for Pinyin! To enable this, make sure your OS language is set to a supported Chinese variant.
• A new built-in Remote Desktop extension to quickly jump to your remote desktops.
• You can now select a custom search engine in the Web Search extension settings.
• Added drag and drop support. File Indexer and Clipboard History can now drag content from Command Palette into other apps, and extension developers can add this capability to their own extensions.

Next, we have a brand-new tool called CursorWrap. It will be a big help for users with big monitors or multi-monitor setups, as it allows you not to drag the cursor from one end to another. Just keep hovering, and the cursor will show up on the opposite side of the screen once it reaches one of the edges.

Other changes in PowerToys 0.97 include better performance for Quick Access, CLI support for FancyZones, Image Resizer, and File Locksmith, the ability for Light Switch to follow Night Light settings, and more.

Here is the full changelog:

Advanced Paste

• Added hex color previews in clipboard history. Thanks @crramirez!
• Added automatic placeholder endpoints when required fields are left empty.
• Fixed a grammar issue in the AI settings description. Thanks @erik-anderson!
• Fixed loading order so custom action hotkeys are read correctly.
• Updated Advanced Paste descriptions to reflect support for online and local models.
• Fixed clipboard history item selection so it doesn’t duplicate entries.
• Prevented placeholder endpoints from being saved for providers that don’t need them.
• Added image input support for AI transforms and improved clipboard change tracking.

Awake

• Fixed Awake CLI so help, errors, and logs appear correctly in the console. Thanks @daverayment!

Command Palette

• Fixed background image loading in BlurImageControl. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Fixed SDK packaging paths and added a CI SDK build stage.
• Aligned naming and spell-checking with .NET conventions. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added drag-and-drop support for Command Palette items. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added a PowerToys Command Palette extension to discover and launch PowerToys utilities.
• Fixed grid view bindings and layout issues. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Fixed a line-break issue in RDC extension toast messages. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Made the Settings button text localizable. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Hid the RDC fallback on the home page and fixed MSTSC working directory handling. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Optimized result list merging for better performance. Thanks @daverayment!
• Added Small/Medium/Large detail sizes in the extensions API. Thanks @DevLGuilherme!
• Hid fallback commands on the home page when no query is entered. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added back navigation support in the Settings window. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added a Command Palette solution filter. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Updated Extension SDK documentation links to Microsoft Learn. Thanks @RubenFricke!
• Added a custom search engine URL setting for Web Search. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added pinyin matching for Chinese input. Thanks @frg2089!
• Bumped Command Palette version to 0.8.
• Removed subtitles from built-in top-level commands. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Refined separator styling in the details pane. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added a built-in Remote Desktop extension.
• Added a Peek command to the Indexer extension.
• Improved default browser detection using the Windows Shell API. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added Escape key behavior options. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added theme and background customization options. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Improved WinGet package app matching. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added an auto-return-home delay setting. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added fallback ranking and global results settings.
• Removed the selection indicator in the context menu list. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added a developer ribbon with build and log info. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Updated the “Learn more” string for Command Palette. Thanks @pratnala!
• Added arrow-key navigation for grid views. Thanks @samrueby!
• Fixed version display when running unpackaged. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added a native debugging launch profile. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Reduced redundant property change notifications in the SDK. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Improved section readability and accessibility. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Made gallery spacing uniform. Thanks @jiripolasek!
• Added sections and separators for list and grid pages. Thanks @DevLGuilherme!

Crop & Lock

• Added a screenshot mode that freezes a cropped region into its own window. Thanks @fm-sys!

Cursor Wrap

• Improved Cursor Wrap behavior on multi-monitor setups by wrapping only at outer edges. Thanks @mikehall-ms!

FancyZones

• Fixed editor overlay positioning on mixed-DPI multi-monitor setups. Thanks @Memphizzz!
• Added a FancyZones CLI for command-line layout management.

File Locksmith

• Added a File Locksmith CLI for querying, waiting on, or killing file locks.

Find My Mouse

• Improved spotlight edge rendering for clearer Find My Mouse visuals.
• Added telemetry to track how Find My Mouse is triggered.

Image Resizer

• Fixed Fill mode cropping when Shrink Only is enabled. Thanks @daverayment!
• Added a dedicated Image Resizer CLI for scripted resizing.

Light Switch

• Added telemetry events for Light Switch usage and settings changes.
• Added a Follow Night Light mode to sync theme changes with Night Light.
• Clarified LightSwitchService and LightSwitchStateManager roles in docs.
• Added a Quick Access dashboard button to toggle Light Switch quickly.
• Ensured Light Switch honors GPO policy states with clear status messaging.

Mouse Without Borders

• Continued refactoring Mouse Without Borders by splitting the large Common class into focused components. Thanks @mikeclayton!
• Completed the Common class refactor with Core and IPC helper extraction. Thanks @mikeclayton!

Peek

• Hardened Peek previews with strict resource filtering and safer external link warnings.
• Improved SVG preview compatibility by rendering via WebView2.

PowerRename

• Added HEIF/AVIF EXIF metadata extraction and extension status guidance for related previews.
• Fixed undefined behavior in file time handling. Thanks @safocl!
• Optimized memory allocation for depth-based rename processing.
• Fixed Unicode normalization and non‑breaking space matching. Thanks @daverayment!
• Fixed date token replacements followed by capital letters. Thanks @daverayment!

PowerToys Run Plugins

• Fixed a plugin name typo and added Project Launcher to the third‑party list. Thanks @artickc!
• Added the Open With Antigravity plugin to the third‑party list. Thanks @artickc!

PowerToys Run

• Avoided unnecessary hotkey conflict checks when settings change.
• Added QuickAI to the third-party PowerToys Run plugin list. Thanks @ruslanlap!

Quick Accent

• Added localized quotation marks to Quick Accent. Thanks @warquys!
• Fixed duplicate and redundant characters in Quick Accent sets. Thanks @noraa-junker!
• Fixed DPI positioning issues for Quick Accent on mixed-DPI setups. Thanks @noraa-junker!

Settings

• Added a new tray icon that adapts to theme changes. Thanks @HO-COOH!
• Centralized module enable/disable logic for cleaner Settings UI updates.
• Simplified Settings utilities by removing ISettingsUtils/ISettingsPath interfaces. Thanks @noraa-junker!
• Improved Settings UI consistency and disabled-state visuals.
• Added semantic headings to the Dashboard for better accessibility.
• Introduced Quick Access as a standalone host with updated Settings integration.
• Fixed Dashboard toggle flicker and sort menu checkmarks. Thanks @daverayment!
• Added Native AOT-compatible settings serialization.
• Standardized mouse tool description text. Thanks @daverayment!
• Added a global SettingsUtils singleton to reduce repeated initialization.

You can read more about the latest PowerToys update here. Version 0.97 is now available for download from GitHub and the Microsoft Store.

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Posted Wednesday 21 January 2026 at 4:37 am AEST (my time).

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Unfortunately for users, the Patch Tuesday update has had two major issues and as such, Microsoft was forced to release emergency OOB updates for them to patch those issues under KB5077744 and KB5077797.

Microsoft has also confirmed problems on classic Outlook as many users claim that the new Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2 update, KB5074109, made the app "completely unusable" as there are random hangs and freezes, unsaved email progresses, and more.

On a thread tracking the issue, a user John W wrote: "Outlook classic is completely unusable since this forced windows update. Random hangs, not saving emails, etc. Hours of troubleshooting to no avail... Uninstalling the update KB5074109 fixed it for me! I am now able to close outlook gracefully, reopen it, and all of my progress is saved."

The response was upvoted by 28 users at the time of writing so clearly many people found it helpful. The thread was originally started by Chris Seagrave and they too note that uninstalling the update fixed the issue.

An IT business named Suncoast Information Systems also confirmed that multiple devices on their chain that were facing such issues, are no longer experiencing problems after uninstalling the latest Patch Tuesday.

If you are wondering about the specific issues users are having, Microsoft has documented it on a support article. The company explains: "After updating Windows 11 to KB5074109 January 13, 2026 users with Outlook POP account profiles report that Outlook is not exiting properly. This means that Outlook will not restart after you close it. In addition, some users report issues with Outlook hangs or freezes."

Microsoft says that there may be more symptoms that are yet to be understood and associated with this bug, and hence it is waiting for further investigation to confirm them. Interestingly, Microsoft has not released any workaround of its own so it looks like uninstalling Windows 11 KB5074109 is the only solution for now.

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Posted Tuesday 20 January 2026 at 4:39 am AEST (my time).

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If you’ve ever used a 3D printer, you may recall the wondrous feeling when you first printed something you could have never sculpted or built yourself. Download a model file, load some plastic filament, push a button, and almost like magic, a three-dimensional object appears. But the result isn’t polished and ready for mass production, and creating a novel shape requires more skills than just pushing a button. Interestingly, today’s AI coding agents feel much the same way.

Since November, I have used Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5 through a personal Claude Max account to extensively experiment with AI-assisted software development (I have also used OpenAI’s Codex in a similar way, though not as frequently). Fifty projects later, I’ll be frank: I have not had this much fun with a computer since I learned BASIC on my Apple II Plus when I was 9 years old. This opinion comes not as an endorsement but as personal experience: I voluntarily undertook this project, and I paid out of pocket for both OpenAI and Anthropic’s premium AI plans.

Throughout my life, I have dabbled in programming as a utilitarian coder, writing small tools or scripts when needed. In my web development career, I wrote some small tools from scratch, but I primarily modified other people’s code for my needs. Since 1990, I’ve programmed in BASIC, C, Visual Basic, PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, Ruby, MUSHcode, and some others. I am not an expert in any of these languages—I learned just enough to get the job done. I have developed my own hobby games over the years using BASIC, Torque Game Engine, and Godot, so I have some idea of what makes a good architecture for a modular program that can be expanded over time.

In December, I used Claude Code to create a multiplayer online clone of Katamari Damacy called “Christmas Roll-Up.”

Credit: Benj Edwards

Claude Code, Codex, and Google’s Gemini CLI, can seemingly perform software miracles on a small scale. They can spit out flashy prototypes of simple applications, user interfaces, and even games, but only as long as they borrow patterns from their training data. Much like a 3D printer, doing production-level work takes far more effort. Creating durable production code, managing a complex project, or crafting something truly novel still requires experience, patience, and skill beyond what today’s AI agents can provide on their own.

And yet these tools have opened a world of creative potential in software that was previously closed to me, and they feel personally empowering. Even with that impression, though, I know these are hobby projects, and the limitations of coding agents lead me to believe that veteran software developers probably shouldn’t fear losing their jobs to these tools any time soon. In fact, they may become busier than ever.

So far, I have created over 50 demo projects in the past two months, fueled in part by a bout of COVID that left me bedridden with a laptop and a generous 2x Claude usage cap that Anthropic put in place during the last few weeks of December. As I typed furiously all day, my wife kept asking me, “Who are you talking to?”

You can see a few of the more interesting results listed on my personal website. Here are 10 interesting things I’ve learned from the process.

1. People are still necessary

Even with the best AI coding agents available today, humans remain essential to the software development process. Experienced human software developers bring judgment, creativity, and domain knowledge that AI models lack. They know how to architect systems for long-term maintainability, how to balance technical debt against feature velocity, and when to push back when requirements don’t make sense.

For hobby projects like mine, I can get away with a lot of sloppiness. But for production work, having someone who understands version control, incremental backups, testing one feature at a time, and debugging complex interactions between systems makes all the difference. Knowing something about how good software development works helps a lot when guiding an AI coding agent—the tool amplifies your existing knowledge rather than replacing it.

As independent AI researcher Simon Willison wrote in a post distinguishing serious AI-assisted development from casual “vibe coding,” “AI tools amplify existing expertise. The more skills and experience you have as a software engineer the faster and better the results you can get from working with LLMs and coding agents.”

With AI assistance, you don’t have to remember how to do everything. You just need to know what you want to do.

Card Miner: Heart of the Earth is entirely human-designed, but it was AI-coded using Claude Code. It represents about a month of iterative work.

Credit: Benj Edwards

So I like to remind myself that coding agents are software tools best used to enact human ideas, not autonomous coding employees. They are not people (and not people replacements) no matter how the companies behind them might market them.

If you think about it, everything you do on a computer was once a manual process. Programming a computer like the ENIAC involved literally making physical bits (connections) with wire on a plugboard. The history of programming has been one of increasing automation, so even though this AI-assisted leap is somewhat startling, one could think of these tools as an advancement similar to the advent of high-level languages, automated compilers and debugger tools, or GUI-based IDEs. They can automate many tasks, but managing the overarching project scope still falls to the person telling the tool what to do.

And they can have rapidly compounding benefits. I’ve now used AI tools to write better tools—such as changing the source of an emulator so a coding agent can use it directly—and those improved tools are already having ripple effects. But a human must be in the loop for the best execution of my vision. This approach has kept me very busy, and contrary to some prevailing fears about people becoming dumber due to AI, I have learned many new things along the way.

2. AI models are brittle beyond their training data

Like all AI models based on the Transformer architecture, the large language models (LLMs) that underpin today’s coding agents have a significant limitation: They can only reliably apply knowledge gleaned from training data, and they have a limited ability to generalize that knowledge to novel domains not represented in that data.

What is training data? In this case, when building coding-flavored LLMs, AI companies download millions of examples of software code from sources like GitHub and use them to make the AI models. Companies later specialize them for coding through fine-tuning processes.

The ability of AI agents to use trial and error—attempting something and then trying again—helps mitigate the brittleness of LLMs somewhat. But it’s not perfect, and it can be frustrating to see a coding agent spin its wheels trying and failing at a task repeatedly, either because it doesn’t know how to do it or because it previously learned how to solve a problem but then forgot because the context window got compacted (more on that here).

Violent Checkers is a physics-based corruption of the classic board game, coded using Claude Code.

Credit: Benj Edwards

To get around this, it helps to have the AI model take copious notes as it goes along about how it solved certain problems so that future instances of the agent can learn from them again. You also want to set ground rules in the claude.md file that the agent reads when it begins its session.

This brittleness means that coding agents are almost frighteningly good at what they’ve been trained and fine-tuned on—modern programming languages, JavaScript, HTML, and similar well-represented technologies—and generally terrible at tasks on which they have not been deeply trained, such as 6502 Assembly or programming an Atari 800 game with authentic-looking character graphics.

It took me five minutes to make a nice HTML5 demo with Claude but a week of torturous trial and error, plus actual systematic design on my part, to make a similar demo of an Atari 800 game. To do so, I had to use Claude Code to invent several tools, like command-line emulators and MCP servers, that allow it to peek into the operation of the Atari 800’s memory and chipset to even begin to make it happen.

3. True novelty can be an uphill battle

Due to what might poetically be called “preconceived notions” baked into a coding model’s neural network (more technically, statistical semantic associations), it can be difficult to get AI agents to create truly novel things, even if you carefully spell out what you want.

For example, I spent four days trying to get Claude Code to create an Atari 800 version of my HTML game Violent Checkers, but it had trouble because in the game’s design, the squares on the checkerboard don’t matter beyond their starting positions. No matter how many times I told the agent (and made notes in my Claude project files), it would come back to trying to center the pieces to the squares, snap them within squares, or use the squares as a logical basis of the game’s calculations when they should really just form a background image.

To get around this in the Atari 800 version, I started over and told Claude that I was creating a game with a UFO (instead of a circular checker piece) flying over a field of adjacent squares—never once mentioning the words “checker,” “checkerboard,” or “checkers.” With that approach, I got the results I wanted.

A screenshot of Benj’s Mac while working on a Violent Checkers port for the Atari 800 home computer, amid other projects.

Credit: Benj Edwards

Why does this matter? Because with LLMs, context is everything, and in language, context changes meaning. Take the word “bank” and add the words “river” or “central” in front of it, and see how the meaning changes. In a way, words act as addresses that unlock the semantic relationships encoded in a neural network. So if you put “checkerboard” and “game” in the context, the model’s self-attention process links up a massive web of semantic associations about how checkers games should work, and that semantic baggage throws things off.

A couple of tricks can help AI coders navigate around these limitations. First, avoid contaminating the context with irrelevant information. Second, when the agent gets stuck, try this prompt: “What information do you need that would let you implement this perfectly right now? What tools are available to you that you could use to discover that information systematically without guessing?” This forces the agent to identify (semantically link up) its own knowledge gaps, spelled out in the context window and subject to future action, instead of flailing around blindly.

4. The 90 percent problem

The first 90 percent of an AI coding project comes in fast and amazes you. The last 10 percent involves tediously filling in the details through back-and-forth trial-and-error conversation with the agent. Tasks that require deeper insight or understanding than what the agent can provide still require humans to make the connections and guide it in the right direction. The limitations we discussed above can also cause your project to hit a brick wall.

From what I have observed over the years, larger LLMs can potentially make deeper contextual connections than smaller ones. They have more parameters (encoded data points), and those parameters are linked in more multidimensional ways, so they tend to have a deeper map of semantic relationships. As deep as those go, it seems that human brains still have an even deeper grasp of semantic connections and can make wild semantic jumps that LLMs tend not to.

Creativity, in this sense, may be when you jump from, say, basketball to how bubbles form in soap film and somehow make a useful connection that leads to a breakthrough. Instead, LLMs tend to follow conventional semantic paths that are more conservative and entirely guided by mapped-out relationships from the training data. That limits their creative potential unless the prompter unlocks it by guiding the LLM to make novel semantic connections. That takes skill and creativity on the part of the operator, which once again shows the role of LLMs as tools used by humans rather than independent thinking machines.

5. Feature creep becomes irresistible

While creating software with AI coding tools, the joy of experiencing novelty makes you want to keep adding interesting new features rather than fixing bugs or perfecting existing systems. And Claude (or Codex) is happy to oblige, churning away at new ideas that are easy to sketch out in a quick and pleasing demo (the 90 percent problem again) rather than polishing the code.

Flip-Lash started as a “Tetris but you can flip the board,” but feature creep made me throw in the kitchen sink, losing focus.

Credit: Benj Edwards

Fixing bugs can also create bugs elsewhere. This is not new to coding agents—it’s a time-honored problem in software development. But agents supercharge this phenomenon because they can barrel through your code and make sweeping changes in pursuit of narrow-minded goals that affect lots of working systems. We’ve already talked about the importance of having a good architecture guided by the human mind behind the wheel above, and that comes into play here.

6. AGI is not here yet

Given the limitations I’ve described above, it’s very clear that an AI model with general intelligence—what people usually call artificial general intelligence (AGI)—is still not here. AGI would hypothetically be able to navigate around baked-in stereotype associations and not have to rely on explicit training or fine-tuning on many examples to get things right. AI companies will probably need a different architecture in the future.

I’m speculating, but AGI would likely need to learn permanently on the fly—as in modify its own neural network weights—instead of relying on what is called “in-context learning,” which only persists until the context fills up and gets compacted or wiped out.

Grapheeti is a “drawing MMO” where people around the world share a canvas.

Credit: Benj Edwards

In other words, you could teach a true AGI system how to do something by explanation or let it learn by doing, noting successes, and having those lessons permanently stick, no matter what is in the context window. Today’s coding agents can’t do that—they forget lessons from earlier in a long session or between sessions unless you manually document everything for them. My favorite trick is instructing them to write a long, detailed report on what happened when a bug is fixed. That way, you can point to the hard-earned solution the next time the amnestic AI model makes the same mistake.

7. Even fast isn’t fast enough

While using Claude Code for a while, it’s easy to take for granted that you suddenly have the power to create software without knowing certain programming languages. This is amazing at first, but you can quickly become frustrated that what is conventionally a very fast development process isn’t fast enough. Impatience at the coding machine sets in, and you start wanting more.

But even if you do know the programming languages being used, you don’t get a free pass. You still need to make key decisions about how the project will unfold. And when the agent gets stuck or makes a mess of things, your programming knowledge becomes essential for diagnosing what went wrong and steering it back on course.

8. People may become busier than ever

After guiding way too many hobby projects through Claude Code over the past two months, I’m starting to think that most people won’t become unemployed due to AI—they will become busier than ever. Power tools allow more work to be done in less time, and the economy will demand more productivity to match.

It’s almost too easy to make new software, in fact, and that can be exhausting. One project idea would lead to another, and I was soon spending eight hours a day during my winter vacation shepherding about 15 Claude Code projects at once. That’s too much split attention for good results, but the novelty of seeing my ideas come to life was addictive. In addition to the game ideas I’ve mentioned here, I made tools that scrape and search my past articles, a graphical MUD based on ZZT, a new type of MUSH (text game) that uses AI-generated rooms, a new type of Telnet display proxy, and a Claude Code client for the Apple II (more on that soon). I also put two AI-enabled emulators for Apple II and Atari 800 on GitHub. Phew.

Consider the advent of the steam shovel, which allowed humans to dig holes faster than a team using hand shovels. It made existing projects faster and new projects possible. But think about the human operator of the steam shovel. Suddenly, we had a tireless tool that could work 24 hours a day if fueled up and maintained properly, while the human piloting it would need to eat, sleep, and rest.

I used Claude Code to create a windowing GUI simulation of the Mac that works over Telnet.

Credit: Benj Edwards

In fact, we may end up needing new protections for human knowledge workers using these tireless information engines to implement their ideas, much as unions rose as a response to industrial production lines over 100 years ago. Humans need rest, even when machines don’t.

Will an AI system ever replace the human role here? Even if AI coding agents could eventually work fully autonomously, I don’t think they’ll replace humans entirely because there will still be people who want to get things done, and new AI power tools will emerge to help them do it.

9. Fast is scary to people

AI coding tools can turn what was once a year-long personal project into a five-minute session. I fed Claude Code a photo of a two-player Tetris game I sketched in a notebook back in 2008, and it produced a working prototype in minutes (prompt: “create a fully-featured web game with sound effects based on this diagram”). That’s wild, and even though the results are imperfect, it’s a bit frightening to comprehend what kind of sea change in software development this might entail.

Since early December, I’ve been posting some of my more amusing experimental AI-coded projects to Bluesky for people to try out, but I discovered I needed to deliberately slow down with updates because they came too fast for people to absorb (and too fast for me to fully test). I’ve also received comments like “I’m worried you’re using AI, you’re making games too fast” and so on.

Benj’s handwritten game design note about a two-player Tetris concept from 2007.

Credit: Benj Edwards

Regardless of my own habits, the flow of new software will not slow down. There will soon be a seemingly endless supply of AI-augmented media (games, movies, images, books), and that’s a problem we’ll have to figure out how to deal with. These products won’t all be “AI slop,” either; some will be done very well, and the acceleration in production times due to these new power tools will balloon the quantity beyond anything we’ve seen.

Social media tends to prime people to believe that AI is all good or all bad, but that kind of black-and-white thinking may be the easy way out. You’ll have no cognitive dissonance, but you’ll miss a far richer third option: seeing these tools as imperfect and deserving of critique but also as useful and empowering when they bring your ideas to life.

AI agents should be considered tools, not entities or employees, and they should be amplifiers of human ideas. My game-in-progress Card Miner is entirely my own high-level creative design work, but the AI model handled the low-level code. I am still proud of it as an expression of my personal ideas, and it would not exist without AI coding agents.

10. These tools aren’t going away

For now, at least, coding agents remain very much tools in the hands of people who want to build things. The question is whether humans will learn to wield these new tools effectively to empower themselves. Based on two months of intensive experimentation, I’d say the answer is a qualified yes, with plenty of caveats.

We also have social issues to face: Professional developers already use these tools, and with the prevailing stigma against AI tools in some online communities, many software developers and the platforms that host their work will face difficult decisions.

Ultimately, I don’t think AI tools will make human software designers obsolete. Instead, they may well help those designers become more capable. This isn’t new, of course; tools of every kind have been serving this role since long before the dawn of recorded history. The best tools amplify human capability while keeping a person behind the wheel. The 3D printer analogy holds: amazing fast results are possible, but mastery still takes time, skill, and a lot of patience with the machine.

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Posted Tuesday 20 January 2026 at 4:32 am AEST (my time).

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In all, there are six emergency updates available, for a selection of issues spread across various versions of Windows. Perhaps the most significant are the KB5077744 and KB5077797 updates which fix problems with shutting down as well as issues with remote desktop connections to cloud PCs.

The four other updates are all related to the cloud PC remote desktop connection problem Windows 10, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022, and Windows Server 2025. In the release notes for the KB5077797 update, Microsoft advises that it is a cumulative out-of-band update that “includes updates from previous security releases, along with an additional fix”.

Going on to provide a little more in the way of detail, the company says:

This OOB update includes quality improvements. This update is cumulative and includes security fixes and improvements from the January 13, 2026, security update (KB5073455) in addition to the following:

 

After you install the January 2026 Windows security update (KB5073455), you might experience the following issues, which are resolved by this OOB update:

 

• [Remote Desktop] Fixed: Some users experienced sign-in failures during Remote Desktop connections. This issue affected authentication steps for different Remote Desktop applications on Windows such as the Windows App.
• [Power & Battery] Fixed: Some devices with Secure Launch enabled restart instead of shutting down or entering hibernation.

 

If you installed earlier updates, your device downloads and installs only the new updates contained in this package.

The promise of Just the Browser sounds good. Rather than fork one of the big-name browsers, just run a tiny script that turns off all the bits and functions you don't want.

Just the Browser is a new project by developer Corbin Davenport. It aims to fight the rising tide of undesirable browser features such as telemetry, LLM bot features billed as AI, and sponsored content by a clever lateral move. It uses the enterprise management features built into the leading browsers to turn these things off.

The concept is simple and appealing. Enough people want de-enshittified browsers that there are multiple forks of the big names. For Firefox, there are Waterfox and Zen as well as LibreWolf and Floorp, and projects based off much older versions of the codebase such as Pale Moon. Most people, though, tend to use Chrome and there are lots of browsers based on its Chromium upstream too, including Microsoft Edge, the Chinese-owned Opera, and from some of the people behind the original Norwegian Opera browser, Vivaldi.

Another fairly prominent Chrome-based browser is also the reason why Davenport's name might be familiar. Back in 2023, he wrote an elegant list of reasons to stop using Brave Browser – an article that The Reg FOSS desk has previously cited. Those with long memories may have encountered Davenport's work nearly a decade earlier, though. Way back in 2014, The Register described him as an enfant terrible for running Windows 95 on a smartwatch.

We are regular users of some of these alternative browsers ourselves, but maintaining such a fork is a big job. Modern browsers are vast. Chromium weighs in at about 48.5 million lines of code and Mozilla Firefox isn't much smaller at 44.75 million.

Just disabling the unwanted features does seem like a much easier route – and because these policies are intended for human managers, they are quite readable. The entirety of the Firefox changes that Just the Browser makes is:

{
  "policies": {
    "DisableFirefoxStudies": true,
    "DisableTelemetry": true,
    "DontCheckDefaultBrowser": true,
    "FirefoxHome": {
      "SponsoredStories": false,
      "SponsoredTopSites": false,
      "Stories": false
    },
    "GenerativeAI": {
      "Enabled": false
    },
    "SearchEngines": {
      "Remove": [
        "Perplexity"
      ]
    }
  }
}

The browsers will tell you what policies are in effect. In Firefox, enter about:policies into the URL bar; in browsers based on Chrome, it's chrome://policy/. After you've applied a policy to your settings, your browser's dialog box may include a warning.

For us, Chrome said:

Your browser is managed by your organization

If your browser already is managed by an organization, of course, you're going to have to persuade the powers that be. Good luck with that, and if you find a way, let us know in the comments.

The Just the Browser site supports Windows, macOS, and Linux, and offers installation instructions that boil down to "paste this into a terminal." For older techie types, this is an unwelcome move – but no problem, you can also download the settings files, look at them for yourself – as you can see above, they're not very long – and apply them to your browser manually. The code is all available on GitHub.

We like the idea. So long as the browsers continue to have policy settings that control such things, and so long as they really do honor them, it's tough to see a downside here. ®

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By continuing to push its Windows 10 customers towards upgrading to Windows 11, Microsoft has started 2026 how it finished 2025. But some people who recently installed the first free update of the year for Windows 11 will have found some unwanted bugs, which has prompted the firm to release an emergency software patch to fix things.

As reported by The Verge, Microsoft had to release an unplanned emergency software update on January 17, just four days after it pushed out 2026’s first big software update for Windows 11 on January 13.

According to Microsoft, the initial update affected Windows 11 version 23H2 and meant some computers were failing to shut down or hibernate, meaning PCs could not be switched off.

“Microsoft has identified issues upon installing the January 2026 Windows security update. To address these issues, an out-of-band (OOB) update was released today, January 17, 2026,” the firm said, confirming the following bugs:

“Connection and authentication failures in remote connection applications: This issue affects multiple platforms including Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 10, version 22H2 ESU; and Windows Server 2025. See the bottom of this message for the complete list of affected products.

“Devices with Secure Launch might fail to shut down or hibernate: This issue only affects Windows 11, version 23H2.”

This is not the latest version of Windows 11, and was in fact first released in 2023. The bug affecting shut downs only affects computers on this software version on the Enterprise or IoT editions of Windows 11, which means individual consumers should largely be unaffected.

But as you can read above, the latest global version of Windows 11, 25H2, was affected by the bug concerned with remote connection applications, which refers to Windows’ popular Remote Desktop feature.

“After installing the January 2026 Windows security update (KB5074109), some users experienced sign-in failures during Remote Desktop connections,” Microsoft confirmed. “This issue affected authentication steps for different Remote Desktop applications on Windows such as the Windows App.”

It’s not a great look for Microsoft given this is the first update of the year and it caused at least two major bugs for Windows 11 users. The firm stopped supporting Windows 10 in October of last year, no longer sending out free software updates, effectively retiring the operating system.

Users can upgrade to Windows 11 for free if they PC can cope with the OS, otherwise they face running outdated, unsupported software or forking out for a new machine.

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The Linux founder noted this week that RC6 is slightly larger than usual. While he isn’t too worried about this, he did say that “the slightly larger size does make me think that my plan to do an extra RC8 remains reasonable.”

The reasons for the larger release candidate are multifarious. Developers catching up on work after the holidays is cited as a primary reason. Another reason given is that it's simply the result of timing fluctuations with more pull requests arriving at the same time over the week. Despite the larger release, Torvalds notes that the code is stable and not chaotic, indicating there are no show-stopper bugs or scary architectural problems.

Standard kernel cycles usually go to RC7 before the final release. An RC8 adds an extra week of testing. If it materializes, it will be used to ensure the pent-up work hasn’t introduced any subtle regressions.

The RC6 brought with it some notable individual changes. For example, Alice Ryhl submitted a fix for Rust bit operations on 32-bit ARM, showing the continued maturation of Rust in the kernel. There were several updates to the Landlock Linux Security Module (LSM) to fix TCP handling and documentation. More support for various specific hardware, such as the PICAXE AXE027 cable and new quirks for Dell and ASUS laptops were added.

It should go without saying that most users should not attempt to install this kernel as your machine will likely not boot after installing it. The best course of action is to wait until your distribution receives Linux 6.19 as an official update, the time until rollout of this update will vary based on what system you are running.

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 5:17 pm AEST (my time).

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Microsoft released corresponding new dynamic updates too alongside the Patch Tuesday updates. For those who may not know, dynamic updates bring improvements to the Windows Recovery process in the form of Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) updates, which are also called Safe OS updates. The dynamic updates also affect the Setup file binaries in the form of Setup updates.

These Dynamic Update packages are meant to be applied to existing Windows images prior to their deployment. These packages include fixes to Setup.exe binaries, SafeOS updates for Windows Recovery Environment, and more. Dynamic Updates also help preserve Language Pack (LP) and Features on Demand (FODs) content during the upgrade process. VBScript, for example, is currently an FOD on Windows 11 24H2. Both setup and recovery updates were released this time. Microsoft writes:

"KB5074108: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 11, versions 24H2 and 25H2: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE).

KB5074208: Setup Dynamic Update for Windows 11, version 23H2: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to Windows setup binaries or any files that setup uses for feature updates in Windows 11, version 23H2.

KB5073454: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 11, version 23H2: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE).

KB5074207: Setup Dynamic Update for Windows 10, version 21H2 and 22H2: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to Windows setup binaries or any files that setup uses for feature updates in Windows 10, version 21H2 and Windows 10, version 22H2.

KB5075039: Windows Recovery Environment update for Windows 10, version 21H2 and 22H2: January 15, 2026

This update automatically applies Safe OS Dynamic Update (KB5073933) to the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) on a running PC. The update installs improvements to Windows recovery features.

NOTE This update requires 250 MB of free space in the recovery partition to install successfully.

KB5073933: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, versions 21H2 and 22H2: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE).

KB5073932: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, version 1809 and Windows Server 2019: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE).

KB5073931: Safe OS Dynamic Update for Windows 10, version 1607 and Windows Server 2016: January 13, 2026

This update makes improvements to the Windows recovery environment (WinRE)."

Microsoft notes that both the Recovery and Setup updates will be downloaded and installed automatically via the Windows Update channel.

As it happens often, the new Patch Tuesday updates also caused issues as Microsoft confirmed shutdown and hibernation issues, as well as remote desktop connection problems following the updates. Thankfully, Microsoft released new emergency OOB patches to resolve those issues.

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 11:48 am AEST (my time).

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Windows Terminal is the new shell for all your command-line tools, including PowerShell, Command Prompt, and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). However, out of the box, it is not configured to meet everyone's preferences. Every time I set up a new Windows 11 installation on an existing or new computer, I apply a specific set of configurations before doing any real work.

These changes are not about aesthetics alone. They improve readability, reduce friction when switching between shells, and make the Terminal behave consistently across machines. Whether you use PowerShell, Command Prompt, WSL, or all three, these settings turn Windows Terminal from a good default app into a tool that actually looks and works the way you want.

In this how-to guide, I will walk through the exact Windows Terminal configuration I always use on Windows 11.

My essential customization tweaks for Windows Terminal

Windows Terminal is highly customizable, and the settings I’m highlighting here reflect my personal configuration. They’re not presented in any particular order, but each one plays a role in making the Terminal more efficient and consistent for daily use.

1. Set Command Prompt as the default startup profile

Although PowerShell may be the preferred default and preferred shell, I always end up opening Command Prompt. As a result, I always set startup settings to launch Command Prompt.

To set Command Prompt as the default command-line experience, use these steps:

1. Open Start.
2. Search for Windows Terminal and click the top result to open the app.
3. Click the main menu and choose the Settings (Ctrl+,) option.

Clippy, Microsoft’s infamous paperclip assistant, just resurfaced in the most unexpected way: a hidden Office 97 Easter egg that went unnoticed for decades. The discovery proves that even back in the ’90s, Microsoft’s devs were sneaking jokes into their software — and Clippy was already trolling users long before memes made him a legend.It's not every day that I get to write about Office 97, but when an Easter egg is found in an ancient piece of software, I get the privilege. Recently, X user "Albacore" (@thebookisclosed) revealed an Easter egg that has gone unnoticed for decades.

If you perform a specific sequence of tasks within Office 97, you'll see a special treat. Specifically, a series of movements and key presses while using Microsoft Word will show a whole set of development credits.

To get the Easter egg to appear, you need to set your system date to 1997 or later. Then, you need to hold Control and grab the standard toolbar.

You then need to move the toolbar to the left, down, right, and up — each time with a release and hold of the Control key between each direction.

After doing all that, you need to search "This is not a contest" inside Clippy. The period has to be included with the search text.

Figuring out all of Microsoft's Copilots and what they do might be quite a challenge. A user on X decided to try to create a list of Copilots that Microsoft offers these days, and the result is quite impressive or depressing, depending on how you look at it.

Core Copilots or Copilot for consumers:

• Microsoft Copilot: The first thing that comes to mind for most users when they hear the word Copilot. Like ChatGPT, it is the base AI assistant for chatting, image generation, summarization, etc. Available on the web, as a Windows/Mac/mobile app, inside Bing and Edge, and more. There is also Copilot Pro, a premium version with multiple extras.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI assistant in Microsoft 365/Office productivity apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote). Each Microsoft 365 app also has its own Copilot for specific tasks like summaries, scheduling, translation, and slide generation.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: A chat-based Copilot interface for business productivity tasks.
• Copilot in Windows: An AI-based assistant that can automate various actions across the operating system, adjust settings, explain things, etc. Parts of Copilot in Windows require additional hardware like Neural Processing Units.
• Copilot+ PCs: PCs with specialized hardware that enable local AI and additional experiences, primarily by utilizing dedicated Neural Processing Units.
• GitHub Copilot: A developer-focused assistant that helps code writers by suggesting code or explaining stuff.
• Microsoft Security Copilot: Specialized AI for security teams that offers insights, threat detection, incident response, and automation integrated with Defender, Sentinel, Intune, Entra and related security products.
• Copilot Studio: A platform for building and customizing AI agents that can be published to Microsoft 365, Teams, and other environments.

Business-focused Copilots:

• Copilot for Dynamics 365: Embedded AI assistants across Dynamics modules (Sales, Customer Service, Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing, etc.) for automated insights, summaries, and guidance.
• Copilot in Power Platform:
  • Copilot in Power Automate: Automates flows from natural-language prompts.
  • Copilot in Power Apps: Assists low-code app creation.
• Copilot in Microsoft Fabric (Analytics & Data): AI support for data tasks like semantic querying, analysis, and building insights within Microsoft’s data-integration platform.
• Copilot in Azure: Assistants within Azure services to help with cloud resource configuration, automation, troubleshooting, and optimization

Role-specific Copilots

• Copilot for Finance: Finance-oriented AI for reporting, forecasting, and financial insights.
• Copilot for Sales: Sales-focused assistant embedded in CRM workflows (Dynamics 365).
• Copilot for Service: Service-oriented AI across service management platforms.

What is funny about this list of 16 different Copilots is that it is most likely far from complete, and there may be other Copilots for different tasks. Microsoft is done with hundreds of different Windows SKUs (remember Windows Vista Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium?), but its tradition of making confusing and cluttered product portfolios is still here. Good old Microsoft.

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 5:23 am AEST (my time).

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These are major breaking problems and as such Microsoft this weekend released emergency out-of-band (OOB) updates to fix them. The updates are out for both Windows 11 and Windows 10 as the RD connection bug affects many Windows editions across 10 and 11.

They are available under KB5077744 for Windows 11 25H2, 24H2, KB5077797 on Windows 11 23H2, KB5077796 and KB5077795 on Windows 10. The changelog is given below:

• [Remote Desktop] Fixed: After installing the January 2026 Windows security update (KB5074109), some users experienced sign-in failures during Remote Desktop connections. This issue affected authentication steps for different Remote Desktop applications on Windows such as the Windows App.

• [Power & Battery] Fixed: Some devices with Secure Launch enabled restart instead of shutting down or entering hibernation.

   

These OOB updates are only available for manual downloading. Head over to the official Microsoft support articles on instructions on how to avail them from the Update Catalog: KB5077744 / KB5077797 / KB5077796 / KB5077795.

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 5:21 am AEST (my time).

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ExplainingComputers (1.16m subscribers)

January 19, 2026

Video length: 22m 53s

00:00 Titles & Intro

00:42 Accessibility

03:25 Updates

05:47 Dock Settings

08:38 Activate Firewall

11:30 Check Drivers

15:02 GNOME Tweaks

17:29 Install Fonts (inc MS Core Fonts)

21:56 Wrap (inc adding Solitaire!)

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Posted Monday 19 January 2026 at 5:18 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft released its first security update of 2026 for Windows 11 on January 13th. Just four days later, it was forced to release an emergency out-of-band update to fix some pretty serious bugs, the first one introduced.

The security patch was stopping some systems from shutting down or hibernating properly, and also preventing some users from logging in via remote desktop. The impact of the shutdown bug was limited to machines still running Windows 11 23H2, and only those running either the Enterprise of IoT editions. Still, this is just the latest buggy update that has forced Microsoft to issue an out-of-band update, something that used to be pretty rare, but seems to be becoming increasingly common.

According to the changelog:

Microsoft has identified issues upon installing the January 2026 Windows security update. To address these issues, an out-of-band (OOB) update was released today, January 17, 2026.

- Connection and authentication failures in remote connection applications: This issue affects multiple platforms including Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 10, version 22H2 ESU; and Windows Server 2025. See the bottom of this message for the complete list of affected products.

-Devices with Secure Launch might fail to shut down or hibernate: This issue only affects Windows 11, version 23H2.

Update January 18th: Added context specifying that only Windows 11 23H2 was affected.

Update January 18th: Added context specifying that only Windows 11 23H2 was affected.

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Here are the update highlights:

• New WebGL software backend. Microsoft Edge, on Windows systems without a physical GPU, now uses the Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) rasterizer for WebGL workloads. Prior versions use SwiftShader, which is no longer a supported component. This scenario is most commonly associated with headless environments and virtual machines. On non-Windows platforms, a physical GPU is required for WebGL moving forward.
• Announcement page on update experience. Starting in Edge 145, Edge for Business shows a "What's New" page the first time the browser is launched following a major update. The page helps your users understand new features and how to use them for maximum productivity. Admins can control availability to this feature using the WhatsNewPageForEntraProfilesEnabled policy.
• Performance settings update and feature name changes. The efficiency mode feature name changes to energy saver, and the efficiency mode for PC gaming name will be renamed PC gaming boost to better describe the feature benefits. The new names will be in the browser performance settings after the update.
• Copilot icon visibility. Users can now manage the Copilot icon in their toolbar. To hide the icon, right-click the Copilot icon and select “Hide Copilot”. This opens Settings to toggle the icon’s visibility.
• Improved Autofill experience in Microsoft Edge. When users fill in an Address on a form, they'll be prompted to choose whether to save it for future Autofill suggestions. This enhancement ensures Autofill data is saved intentionally by users and reduces unwanted entries as part of their Autofill suggestions.
• Desktop Visual Search. Quickly send images to Bing Visual Search from the Edge Desktop Search Bar to identify images, people, animals, and shows; extract, copy, and translate text while keeping its format. Solve questions quickly in various subjects and get trusted information to boost your knowledge. Discover products, fashion, recipes, identify a location and more. Available on Windows devices.

As for fixes, Edge 144.0.3719.82 includes security fixes for various vulnerabilities and a fix for a browser crash that occurred when attempting to upload a file from a local folder.

You can update Microsoft Edge to the latest version by heading to edge://settings/help. Alternatively, you can continue using the browser as is, and it will update itself in the background between restarts.

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Posted Sunday 18 January 2026 at 11:47 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft Edge is killing off its Collections feature — the tool many relied on to save and organize links, notes, and research. Instead of a smooth transition, users are finding themselves caught in the crossfire: data is at risk, migration is clunky, and once again, Microsoft looks like it’s abandoning a feature before it ever reached its full potential, or was it more that just people didn't use it?

"Collections is being retired," reads the browser. "You will no longer be able to add new items to Collections. To keep your saved content, you can export it, or move all pages to your Favorites before removal."

Below that message sit shortcuts to move pages to favorites or export your data.

The retirement has been hinted at for months, but the process seems to have turned a corner. Windows Report spotted the message within Edge Dev recently.

The two options presented by Edge are not full replacements for Collections. If you opt to move pages to favorites, you'll lose other content such as images and notes. Exporting your data retains all of your content in a CSV file, but the items will no longer be in your browser. The end result is that there is no way to retain all your data within Edge.

It's unclear when Collections will be retired, so it's worth moving your data now if you rely on the feature.

Why is Microsoft Edge losing another feature?

I'm the first to criticize Microsoft when its leaders decide to remove a fan-favorite feature, but I don't think that's what's happening here. Collections do not appear to be popular among Edge users.

Leo Varela, who follows the development of Microsoft Edge closely, noted on X that many stopped using Collections in Edge after Microsoft switched from a native implementation to a web-based one:

While this discovery delighted many fans, it also begs the question why Microsoft does not engage in "fun" activities like these anymore, especially in its flagship software like Windows which is used by billions of users, including those who will likely enjoy this sort of community-powered activity. There are many reasons behind this, unfortunately.

Trustworthy Computing initiative

Back in 2002, Microsoft CEO Bill Gates launched the Trustworthy Computing (TwC) initiative due to customer backlash regarding Windows security vulnerabilities. The idea behind this campaign was to focus on key areas like security, privacy, reliability, and business integrity. This meant that software should be secure by design, which mandated well-written and documented code that could easily be audited and tested. Since Easter eggs by definition are hidden elements that can be triggered by undocumented actions, the requirement to document all code effectively killed them in many products like Windows and Office. Microsoft still considers TwC an important milestone in advancing the security and reliability of software.

Contracts with governments and federal agencies

Although Microsoft offers slightly varied versions of its software for governments and federal agencies, they largely have the same baselines and primarily differ in terms of security features. Since these are highly sensitive enterprise customers with whom Microsoft signs non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and other contracts regarding reliability of software, the company simply cannot afford to hide unpredictable elements in the software it is selling. Customers like government agencies do not audit every line of code they purchase, so if something unexpected does pop up just because a Microsoft employee thought it would be fun to hide it in a particular software product, it also raises questions about what else may be hidden that potentially violates government regulations. Certain government bodies also require vendors to confirm that no undocumented feature or functionality is present in their products.

Changing programming and testing paradigms

While this is not a particularly new aspect in terms of software development lifecycle, as companies like Microsoft have grown bigger over the years - current headcount is around 225,000 -, it simply also means that there are larger teams working on core products. These include dedicated, large development, testing, auditing, and compliance groups making sure that their products are fit for commercial use. Evolving practices like peer programming, automated testing, and well-defined CI/CD pipelines with better code visibility means that there is relatively little chance of undocumented behavior sneaking through.

On a related note, many of Microsoft's products like Azure are also ISO-certified. The quality-related certifications of this organization require code to be well-documented so any issues can easily be traced back to the root cause.

These are some of the main reasons why Microsoft does not hide Easter eggs in its software products like Windows, Office, and Azure. While they are quite fun to discover, their inherent unpredictability introduces risks and potential compliance violations for unsuspecting customers.

Do you miss Easter eggs in Microsoft products? Which one is your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below!

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Posted Sunday 18 January 2026 at 5:16 am AEST (my time).

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If one thing was clear at CES 2026 — other than "AI" still being the mot-du-jour for most leading PC brands — it's that PC hardware is in an excellent spot. Dare I say it's never felt better?

Laptops have never been thinner or better engineered, processors have never been faster or more efficient, screens have never been prettier, and batteries have never lasted as long. GPUs, well, if you can get your hands on the one you want, you might be surprised by how effective the latest upscaling techniques can be.

A lot of budget laptops, which just a few years ago seemed like a significant step backwards from the more expensive stuff, now feel like they could enter the premium category if only they had some stronger performance components inside.

The patches fix an issue in the installer which made it crash because of how it handled JavaScript and XML. The installer uses JavaScript to talk to the operating system and previously, Wine was delegating certain IDs incorrectly which broke the communication.

The core issue is that Windows is lazy with XML rules but Linux tools like libxml2 are strict. The patch fixes this by wrapping specific Adobe data in CDATA tags so that Linux doesn’t reject the code. The patch also forces Wine to handle events the way Internet Explorer 9 used to, which is what the Adobe installer expects.

While the installer now works correctly, it’s still not perfect to use. While Photoshop 2021 is noted by the developer as running smoothly, they did note that drag-and-drop didn’t work quite right, but that it could be a Wayland issue. Photoshop 2025 was also installable.

The code was initially submitted to ValveSoftware/wine on GitHub, however, commenters recommended submitting it to WineHQ first. If this patch stays in a fork only the gamers using Steam might get it, but not other Wine users. By submitting it upstream to WineHQ it will become a permanent part of the ecosystem for everyone.

With plenty of Windows games working on Linux via Steam’s Proton (also based on Wine), Office 365 being available in the cloud, and now Photoshop via Wine coming on in leaps and bounds, the excuses for not using Linux are shrinking by the day. Hopefully, all of this allows more people to preserve older hardware once Windows support is dropped without too much inconvenience.

Source: GitHub via Phoronix

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Posted Sunday 18 January 2026 at 5:13 am AEST (my time).

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Here is the changelog:

• Fixed compatibility problems with websites that use the new Compression Dictionaries technology, such as ChatGPT, by temporarily disabling the feature. (Bug 2010712)
• Fixed an issue where an unnecessary empty directory was created on Linux systems. (Bug 2001887)
• Fixed an issue where time formats could cause certain websites to display incorrectly. (Bug 2010411)

You can update Firefox by heading to Menu > Help > About Firefox. Alternatively, download the browser's installer from the official website or the Microsoft Store (if you are on Windows 10 and 11).

In case you missed it, Firefox 147 was released earlier this month with a couple of new features, including automatic picture-in-picture when switching tabs, WebGPU support on Apple Silicon Macs, video playback improvements on AMD systems, keyboard shortcut customization, and more. You can find the release notes in our dedicated article.

In other news, Mozilla recently got a new CEO. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo is now at the company's helm, and he promises to make it the "world's most trusted software company." At the same time, Mozilla is facing big pushback from users who do not like the company's efforts to inject more AI into the browser.

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Posted Saturday 17 January 2026 at 4:12 pm AEST (my time).

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For those unfamiliar, the Media Creation Tool app is Microsoft's official utility for downloading Windows images and writing them to physical media. You can create a bootable USB right from the application or download an ISO for use in third-party apps like Rufus, should you need to modify the stock installation for a more user-friendly experience or update an unsupported computer.

With the latest update, the Media Creation Tool now downloads Windows 11 build 26200.7623, which is the January 2026 Patch Tuesday update or KB5074109. You can download the Media Creation Tool app from the official website. There, you can get a Windows 11 ISO using a direct link, bypassing the Media Creation Tool.

If you are going to update to the newest Windows 11 version, beware of a few known bugs that Microsoft has already acknowledged. For one, there is a bug that breaks Remote Desktop connections for some users. Also, some may have a hard time shutting down their PCs, as there is a bug that breaks shutdown and hibernation, which is quite amusing. With the latest updates, Microsoft also made some changes to Windows Update KB identifiers to make things clearer and easier for users and IT administrators.

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Posted Saturday 17 January 2026 at 5:29 am AEST (my time).

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As is often the case with Patch Tuesday updates, they introduce bugs and issues, and this month is no exception either. The company has confirmed that Windows 11 23H2 computers are not able to shut down normally after installing the latest KB5073455 release. Thankfully, not all devices are affected by this bug as Microsoft has explained that the issue is on systems configured with Secure Launch. So if a user chooses to shut down an affected PC, the system does a restart.

If you are wondering what it is, Windows Secure Launch, introduced in Windows 10, is a Virtualization-based Security (VBS) service that uses hardware-based Dynamic Root of Trust for Measurement (DRTM) to protect system integrity during startup. Secure Launch allows the system to boot into untrusted code initially but quickly transitions all CPUs into a trusted state to verify the untrusted code is not malicious. This is to protect from firmware-level threats and works in tandem with Secure Boot. Microsoft refers to these systems as Secured-core PCs.

The company has provided a workaround for the shut down issue. It writes:

"To shut down your device, type cmd in the Search bar and select cmd from the search results to open a Command Prompt. In the Command Prompt window, type the following command and press Enter: shutdown /s /t 0"

The issue affects hibernation as well as some systems are not able to enter a hibernation state; unfortunately, Microsoft says currently there is no workaround for that. The company says it is investigating the problem and has encouraged users to save their work carefully before their system runs out of power or else they lose all progress.

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Posted Saturday 17 January 2026 at 5:25 am AEST (my time).

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POP (Post Office Protocol) is an email retrieval protocol used for downloading emails from a server to a local device. While POP isn't as widely used as IMAP or Exchange, it is still popular among home users and small businesses.

This known issue affects users who have installed the KB5074109 security update for Windows 11 25H2 and 24H2, with those impacted reporting that classic Outlook does not exit properly and will not restart after being closed.

"This is an emerging issue, and we don't have all the symptoms yet, but we will update the topic as we understand the issue better," Microsoft said in a Thursday support document.

Microsoft's Outlook and Windows teams are investigating the problem, but the company has yet to provide a timeline for a fix or workaround.

Microsoft said that it will update its advisory as investigators learn more about the scope and cause of this known issue.

Until a permanent fix is released to address this bug, affected users can work around it by uninstalling the KB5074109 update by opening the Settings app, going to Windows Update > Update history > Uninstall updates, and clicking the "Uninstall" link next to "Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB5074109)."

"As soon as the January 14th update was issued, Outlook started freezing and crashing. I uninstalled KB5074109 and now Outlook works fine again," one of the affected users said.

"No repairs or fixes listed worked except uninstalling the security update. I had to postpone updates to keep it from reinstalling."

However, it's important to note that, just as Microsoft also warns, removing security updates may leave Windows devices exposed to malware and other threats, since they patch vulnerabilities that are often already being exploited in attacks.

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Posted Saturday 17 January 2026 at 5:24 am AEST (my time).

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