Every day, your PC creates hundreds of connections, but seeing this activity is a convoluted and opaque process. Connection Explorer was built from the ground up for one thing, to create a window of clarity into these connections to allow you to see what is happening on your device.

Packed with features that allow you to create intelligent alerts for activities, easily block unwanted processes, explore all your historical connection information, and add notes to DNS entries, Connection Explorer keeps you informed about what your device is doing and when it does it.

Stardock knows that you can’t always watch your connections for all hours of the day, which is why Connection Explorer makes it easy to set up alerts with an easy-to-use interface. Creating alerts for connections from unwanted locations, IP addresses, or ports, is easily configured and deployed in seconds.

“The modern desktop is a highly connected device that is uploading and downloading data all day long, our goal was to create an application that allowed you to see what is happening with your desktop” said Brad Sams, General Manager, Stardock Software. “With Connection Explorer, you now have the ability to see what is happening and better understand what your connected footprint looks like as you use your PC”.

Connection Explorer is designed for Windows 11 supports light/dark mode and is available today as a beta as part of Object Desktop. You can learn more about Connection Explorer on its app page, here

You can also download the entire Object Desktop package. Object Desktop includes programs such as Fences, Start11, Groupy, SoundPackager, DeskScapes and Multiplicity.

Disclaimer: Neowin's relationship to Stardoc

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:58 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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Microsoft employs various schemes to stop Edge users from switching to Chrome, and the latest includes financial rewards for sticking with the browser.

As spotted by Windows Latest, select users who search on Bing within Microsoft Edge for a link to download Google Chrome are now shown an offer to stay with the browser. It gives users 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points, which can be redeemed for gift cards (examples include Amazon, Roblox, and Spotify) or donated to one of over 2 million nonprofits.

You can also use Microsoft Rewards points to extend Windows 10 access through October 2026.

However, the offer isn’t appearing for everyone. When we followed the steps, Bing simply displayed a pop-up that noted, "Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft," along with a prompt to "Browse securely now." That took us through a series of slides that touted the benefits of Edge, including a built-in VPN, AI personalization, and the opportunity to earn rewards.

If you use Edge, it’s worth checking to see if you’re able to claim the Reward Points. Search Bing for any Chrome-related term, and you'll see the notification at the top of your search results. According to Windows Latest, this won't work for alternative browsers such as Opera or Brave, or new AI-powered alternatives such as Perplexity’s Comet or OpenAI’s Atlas.

Source

This was also the last patch update for Windows 11 23H2, as it is no longer supported by the company. This applies to Home and Pro editions, but Enterprise and Education editions of the version will continue to be supported till November 10 of 2026.

As such, Microsoft is encouraging users to move to Windows 11 version 25H2 (the Windows 11 2025 update) to "try the latest Windows innovations." You can do so by navigating to the Windows Update section inside the Settings menu and selecting "Check for updates".

When the company launched the update last month in early October 2025, it shared a list of new features that are coming to Windows 11 with the new version. If you are not aware, version 25H2 is mostly based on 24H2, which is why it could be easily upgraded with the enablement package eKB5054156. Thus you can also enable all such features on 25H2 and 24H2 using a simple hack. You can find the guide in this article.

Regardless, Microsoft says that it will automatically push the new feature update out to Windows 11 23H2 devices as long as they are eligible to receive it, which essentially means if you are running the OS on an unsupported PC, you will not get Windows 11 25H2.

Microsoft writes: "As of November 11, 2025, Home and Pro editions of Windows 11, version 23H2, have reached end of servicing. ... Devices running Home and Pro editions of Windows 11, version 23H2 that are not managed by IT departments will receive the Windows 11, version 25H2 update automatically."

Interestingly, this is also the end of the road for many systems that had been running Windows 11 23H2 or some older version of Windows 11 on a very old unsupported PC. That is because Windows 11 24H2 and likewise 25H2 can not be installed on processors that lack SSE4.2 and PopCnt. Such devices will have to remain on Windows 11 23H2. Thankfully, most systems post-2008 have those instructions so it should not be a big issue.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:32 am AEST (my time).

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As noted by The Verge, Google has relaunched Cameyo as "Cameyo by Google". Some of you may recall, Google acquired Cameyo back in 2024. The Virtual Application Delivery (VAD) service enables businesses using Chromebooks to stream Windows apps on their hardware. These apps are run as web apps, which means that they become platform-agnostic and customers are no longer bound to Microsoft's ecosystem, at least in this space.

Google has boasted that Cameyo is now more efficient in terms of switching between virtual desktop environments, so that the entire desktop environment isn't virtualized. This means that you can run various Microsoft and Google apps simultaneously. The firm noted that:

For years, the primary blocker for deeper enterprise adoption of ChromeOS has always been the ‘app gap’ — the persistent need to access a few remaining Windows applications within an organization. Now, teams can move to a more modern, collaborative productivity suite that was built for the web, and they can still access any specialized Windows apps that their workflows still depend on.

It is certainly an interesting move, to say the least. Some Chromebooks are relatively cheap, but organizations are hesitant to purchase the hardware because they are entrenched in Microsoft's ecosystem. A service like Cameyo should at least let them ponder the option of buying Chromebooks for most work and then virtualize Windows apps when needed. It remains to be seen if this will make a sizeable dent in Windows' market share.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:31 am AEST (my time).

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For starters, Microsoft is hard at work fixing bugs in Windows MIDI Services on WoA, and will be putting them in production versions of the OS soon. It has also been collaborating with a ton of partners building software for music production. Ableton Live is getting a native Arm64 app next year, and others like Bitwig Studio and REAPER are already available. Microsoft has a gigantic list of vendors involved in this category in its lengthy blog post here, which you can peruse at your leisure.

Microsoft is also collaborating with Qualcomm and Yamaha to develop a built-in low-latency USB Audio Class 2 and ASIO driver specifically for WoA hardware. It will have plug-and-play capabilities so any device that is USB Audio Class 2-compliant should "just work". This driver is currently being validated and tested internally, and will be released in public preview next year. This project is already available under a "permissive" MIT license on GitHub so that interested developers can spin off their own variants or improve upon Microsoft's implementation.

The Redmond tech giant notes that WoA already has a USB Audio Class 2 driver, but it is high latency and does not support all audio endpoints on a device. It doesn't have native integration with the ASIO protocol either. Since the effort to build the new driver is open-source, Microsoft believes that missing features will be added more quickly.

A public preview for the new driver will be available in 2026 on the Windows Canary Channel, but an ASIO control panel applet may have to be installed via GitHub separately. Microsoft expects this preview to last a long time since the ecosystem is so vast and diverse. That said, do keep in mind that this driver will work on Intel architecture too, even though it is being built primarily with WoA in mind.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:30 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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If anyone is wondering, RAID, or Redundant Array of Independent Disks, is a technology that allows users to combine multiple, typically inexpensive, disks such that data redundancy can be created to prevent data loss and/or improve performance.

Microsoft has just ended Windows 11 23H2 support and has confirmed that it will be automatically pushing the new 25H2 feature update on such devices as long as they are eligible and meet the system requirements.

As such, this looks like a good time for AMD to have released the new RAID software version 9.3.3.00245 that is compatible with 25H2. The new update supports all Socket AM5 600 and 800 series chipsets which include AMD A620, B650, B650E, X670, X670E, B840, B850, X870, and X870E.

If you are wondering about support on AM4 platform, the company dropped it a long time ago. Hence, the new driver supports every Ryzen desktop processor, 7000 series and newer, as well as new Ryzen AI mobile SKUs, like 300 series, among others.

The major highlights of the release are given below:

• Installer supports Windows® 10 and Windows® 11.

• New version of AMD RAID driver (9.3.3.00245) and AMD RAIDxpert2 utility (9.3.3.00245).

• Added support for Win 11 25H2 OS.

• RAIDXpert2 GUI fixes and enhancements.

• RAIDXpert2 GUI displays the EULA only once when restarted after it is initially accepted.

• Fix for sporadic device drop issues and bug checks

   

AMD has cautioned about installation related issues though, which can be critical in the case of RAID, which is often why users maybe advised to stick to software-based RAID solutions, like Windows' Storage Spaces for example.

The known issues for the new RAID driver are given below:

• While upgrading or downgrading AMD RAID drivers, system must consecutively reboot twice for AMD RAID drivers to work properly.

• Informed removal of the front bay NVMe may fail following an array transformation; the system must be rebooted afterwards. Refer to safety precautions section in the user guide.

• AMD RAID drivers cannot load while installing Win11 24H2 & 25H2 OS using ODD as boot media.

• OS Installation may fail when OS is not installed on the first RAID array.

   

To download the driver, head over to this page on AMD's official website.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:26 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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Fastfetch is a command-line utility for fetching and displaying system information in a pretty format, and it is a modern, performant replacement for the no-longer-maintained Neofetch. The utility has been updated to version 2.55, bringing dynamic output refreshing, support for media cover art as logos, and parallel command execution.

Commands are now executed in parallel by default, which improves performance when gathering data. This behavior can cause problems with certain scripts, so you can disable it in the configuration file by setting "parallel": false.

Fastfetch does not create this file by default, so you must first run fastfetch --gen-config to get one. Inside the config.jsonc file, you can control the entire look and feel of the output. You can reorder modules, disable ones you do not care about, and generally choose what information you want to see.

If you don't want to start from scratch, you can use a preset. For instance, running fastfetch --config neofetch --gen-config creates a config file that mimics Neofetch's old layout.

There's a new --dynamic-interval [interval in ms] that you can pass into the command to get an auto-refreshing output. One catch is that some modules, like Display and Media, do not support these dynamic updates because of some internal limitations.

Apart from the dynamic display, you would also find support for using the cover art from your current playing media as the logo. You can enable this by passing a flag like --sixel media-cover on the command line, or by adding the following in your config file:

"logo": {
  "type": "sixel",
  "source": "media-cover"
}

Speaking of logos, two new ones were added for Vincent OS and Macaroni OS. Here's what they look like:

Other changes include native GPU detection on OpenBSD and NetBSD, which removes a dependency on libpciaccess. Fastfetch also now supports GPU detection on GNU/Hurd, shows the Debian point release when running on Raspberry Pi OS, and can detect the version of the Brush shell.

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Posted Thursday 13 November 2025 at 1:25 am AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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The bug was acknowledged last week after widespread user reports that the Task Manager continued to run in the background even after the app was quit, causing performance issues such as stuttering and CPU hangs.

Although having a few Task Manager processes running in the background usually doesn't cause issues, this issue can easily become serious when many instances run unnoticed, since it "can cause noticeable slowdowns in other applications," according to Microsoft.

"After installing Windows Updates released on or after October 28, 2025 (KB5067036), you might encounter an issue where closing Task Manager using the Close (X) button does not fully terminate the process," Microsoft noted when it confirmed the bug.

"When you reopen Task Manager, the previous instance continues running in the background even though no window is visible. This results in multiple lingering instances of taskmgr.exe, consuming system resources and potentially degrading device performance."

Background Task Manager processes (BleepingComputer)

Microsoft has now resolved the bug in the KB5068861 November Windows security update and advises customers to install it, as it also comes with fixes for other issues.

Users who have installed last month's KB5067036 preview update but can't immediately deploy this month's cumulative updates can also temporarily work around this known issue by manually quitting the background processes.

Those familiar with the Command Prompt can also quit all of them simultaneously by following these steps:

1.     Select Start or press the Windows key.
2.     Type cmd or Command Prompt in the search box.
3.     Select Command Prompt from the results.
4.     To run as administrator: Right-click  Command Prompt  and select Run as administrator.
5.     In the Command Prompt window, type the following command and press Enter: taskkill.exe /im taskmgr.exe /f

In October, Microsoft resolved 0x800F081F update errors affecting Windows 11 24H2 systems since January and fixed the Windows 11 Media Creation Tool (MCT).

Last week, Microsoft also acknowledged that an emergency security update, which patches an actively exploited Windows Server Update Service (WSUS) vulnerability, has broken hotpatching on some Windows Server 2025 systems.

More recently, it confirmed a known issue that causes some Windows 11 and Windows 10 systems to boot into BitLocker recovery after installing the October 2025 Windows security updates.

Source

Microsoft had begun testing support for 1Password as a passkey provider a few months ago in the Windows Insider Preview Program. This feature is now available for all users.

Windows 11 supports passkeys natively via Windows Hello, so what's this new feature about? Microsoft worked with third-party password managers to create a passkey plugin API for Windows 11. But, why do you need to use these third-party tools? Well, it gives users a choice, they can opt to save passkeys in their favorite password manager, and sync the passkeys across their devices.

To manage your passkeys via 1Password or Bitwarden, you will need to install their respective desktop tools.

1Password says its users can access passkey management from the latest version of the desktop app, by heading to Settings > Autofill and toggle the option that says Show passkey suggestions. This will open Windows' Settings app where you can choose 1Password as the system authenticator.

(Image courtesy: 1Password)

Bitwarden's announcement says that users will need to install the latest beta from GitHub to try the feature. You can download it from this page. It requires Windows OS build 26200.7019 or newer. Go to Windows' Settings > Accounts > Passkeys > Advanced options. Here you will be able to select the default passkey manager, choose Bitwarden, and it will prompt you to authenticate with Windows Hello.

(Image courtesy: Bitwarden)

Now you will be able to create passkeys for websites and store it in your password manager, and use it to log in to your accounts in browsers, and other apps. I tested the beta version of Bitwarden briefly in my Windows VM, and it seems to work fine.

According to Microsoft's announcement, native support for passkey managers is available with the Windows November 2025 security update, aka KB5068861. The feature is available for both Windows 11 24H2 and 25H2.

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•     Windows 10 has pushed out an emergency patch to fix a bug with extended support
•     The glitch meant the wizard for signing up for extended updates failed
•     With this problem ironed out, if you grab the out-of-band update you should be good to enrol for extended support

Microsoft has released a patch to fix a problem whereby some Windows 10 PCs couldn't sign up for extended security updates (the ESU scheme) due to a bug.

As we reported earlier this week, there was a glitch with the ESU signup that meant it simply wasn't working for some Windows 10 users, falling over with an unhelpful error message that simply stated: "Something went wrong."

Thankfully, Windows Latest spotted that Microsoft has released an emergency update to fix this issue.

This is patch KB5071959, which has been deployed out-of-band, meaning outside the normal release cadence for Windows patches.

Microsoft says of the update: "This update addresses an issue in the Windows 10 Consumer Extended Security Update (ESU) enrollment process, where the enrollment wizard may fail during enrollment. After applying this update, consumer devices should be able to successfully enroll in ESU using the ESU wizard."

Note that nobody who's in the ESU will get this patch; it's only for those who haven't been able to sign up for extended updates due to the aforementioned bug and error message.

Analysis: extended woes have come to an end

(Image credit: Microsoft)

It's good to see Microsoft is on the case here, and just in time, as the first security update for Windows 10 PCs enrolled for extended support just emerged yesterday (November 11). Indeed, I just got this patch – which is KB5068781 – on my Windows 10 PC, which is in the ESU scheme, this morning (it took a surprisingly long time to install, considering it's just a barebones set of security fixes – or maybe there's a bit more to this first delivery).

Windows Latest indicates that "all ESU-related issues" are patched with this emergency update, but as we saw earlier this week, aside from the bug, there are also regional barriers preventing signup for extended updates in some cases. I'm not sure if all those will have been resolved, but granted, it makes sense that they should be – given that the first update for the ESU is now out as noted.

Whether or not the whole world now has access to the ESU (which should be the case), you shouldn't be seeing the unhelpful "Something went wrong" error message after applying this emergency patch.

That's going to save a good deal of frustration, no doubt, and if you've been one of those annoyed by these ESU signup failures, head to Windows Update now. Run a check for updates and you should see KB5071959, and after you've installed that you should be good to go for a successful enrolment to the ESU – and then you can grab the November security update for Windows 10.

Extended support means you'll be covered for security updates through to October 2026, but after that you'll be facing the same dilemma that you've put off for a year – upgrade to Windows 11 (if possible), or look at an alternative OS such as a Windows-like flavor of Linux.

Source

With the release of the KB5068781 update, Microsoft is now only addressing problems with Windows 10. With the ESU program now in operation, no new features should be expected.

The update is available for Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 as well as Applies to: Windows 10, version 22H2, and there are no surprises to be found here. If you were hoping that Microsoft had been bluffing about Extended Security Updates focusing on anything other than security, this update will confirm what the company has been saying all along.

The fixes included in the KB5068781 update are very limited. In fact, the only named change addresses a problem with an erroneous message about the ESU program itself. In the release notes for the update, Microsoft says:

This security update includes fixes and quality improvements that are part of the following updates:

•      October 14, 2025—KB 5066791 (OS Builds 19044.6456 and 19045.6456)

The following is a summary of the issues that this update addresses when you install this update. If there are new features, it lists them as well. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change we are documenting.

• [Update (known issue)] Fixed: After installing the October 14, 2025 Windows update (KB5066791), the message, "Your version of Windows has reached the end of support", might incorrectly display in the Windows Update Settings page. To view the page, click Start > Settings > Windows Update.

If you installed earlier updates, only the new updates contained in this package will be downloaded and installed on your device.

So while this update is far from being an exciting one, it is what we should expect from future Windows 10 updates – there will be problems fixed, but nothing more. This is the new normal for anyone who, for whatever reason, is choosing to stick with Windows 10 rather than upgrading to Windows 11 as Microsoft would prefer.

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Firefox 145 is out, with more privacy, better profile handling, better image search for Google users… and, almost inevitably, more LLM bot integration.

Mozilla has released Firefox 145. The release notes in that link make an interesting contrast with the snazzy What's new page which users see on installing the update.

Setting aside Mozilla's branding exercises for one moment, we thought we'd start with the modest new features in the release notes. The top feature here is the ability to add and read comments in PDF files. In a previous life, the Reg FOSS desk was a technical writer, and this feature will be very welcome for people collaboratively writing and editing.

A more familiar example might be the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word: as well as showing when someone else has added or removed text, this also lets co-workers add comments, which appear down one side of the document. PDF files can do this too, but you could be forgiven for not noticing, as it's an extra feature that many basic PDF viewers don't support. In his late 20-teens, this vulture spent hours a month on PDF comments, and at that time, KDE's Okular was the only Linux PDF viewer we could find that could handle them.

The release notes also highlight better protection against fingerprinting and pop-up summaries of tab groups' contents. The built-in password manager is now accessible from the sidebar, you can share links to just part of the text on web pages, and the automatic translation feature can mirror web content when translating between left-to-right scripts (like anything in the Roman, Cyrillic or Greek alphabets) and right-to-left languages (such as Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese). Readers of digital manga translated into Western scripts may be familiar with this.

On Windows, a new Firefox desktop launcher will automatically install the app if the launch icon is synched on to a machine which doesn't yet have Firefox. Meanwhile, as we warned last time, there's no 32-bit Linux version of Firefox 144.

Meanwhile the What's New page has some more marketing-oriented news. Firefox has a new mascot, new merch, and it's easier to set new-tab wallpaper. Tab groups handling has been refined.

Firefox has supported user profiles for many years, but profile management is getting improved. You can still get at the old system via the magic about:profiles URL, if you haven't got this yet. Google users can search inside images with Google Lens.

This vulture does still use Google, but via the magic &udm=14 URL that we told you about in May. That means no Google Lens for us.

And, finally, the irrepressible rise of automated plagiarism bots continues to spread its slop everwhere, including the brains of Mozilla management. Firefox now integrates what Mozilla's blurb calls Perplexity's "AI-powered answer engine" into the address bar. Some Reg contributors like it, but most of our coverage thus far leans toward the negative. We went straight to Preferences | Search, found "Perplexity" in the list of search engines, and removed it. No restart needed. We concur with a paper from the journal Ethics and Information Technology last year: ChatGPT is Bullshit. ®

Source

Windows 11 (version 24H2 and 25H2)

A couple of weeks ago, people noticed that when they close Task Manager, its process get duplicated instead. These new instances don't consume a lot of PC resources, but it does cause annoyances. Microsoft later confirmed this issue and we published a guide explaining how you can fix it. Now, the Redmond tech firm has rolled out a concrete patch for this bug in KB5068861 (Patch Tuesday), which means that you don't need to apply a complicated workaround anymore.

Windows 10 (ESU)

Although Windows 10 is out of support, it can still receive security updates through the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program. Windows 10 customers have been complaining about two bugs in the OS over the past month. The first relates to the Windows 10 ESU enrollment wizard failing for eligible devices. The fix for this is present in the out-of-band (OOB) update released in the form of KB5071959 yesterday. Customers should simply apply the update and restart their device, after which they'll begin to see the latest Patch Tuesday update for Windows 10 ESU.

The other problem impacting users was an incorrect error message being shown on certain Windows 10 devices, noting that "Your version of Windows has reached the end of support", even for LTSC SKUs still in support. Microsoft has patched this through KB5068781, but if you don't install it, you'll have to utilize the Known Issue Rollback (KIR) process described here.

Windows Server 2025

Similar to Windows 10, Windows Server 2025 was also impacted by a couple of bugs. For starters, server-side applications relying on HTTP.sys were experiencing issues with incoming connections. The other issue affecting IT admins was that directory synchronization was failing for Active Directory (AD) groups which had more than 10,000 members. Microsoft patched both of these issues with KB5068861, and as usual, customers who don't install it will still have to rely on KIR workarounds detailed previously.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 5:45 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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In KWin, there is a fix for the issue where users could not map their tablet to another screen. A code change had unintentionally created a situation where once you set a target display for a touchscreen or tablet, you could not change it again. This fix makes sure that KWin's input backend correctly updates the necessary device properties when you select a new display.

The KDE team also worked on a massive stability problem that was causing KWin to crash frequently on Wayland when monitors were disconnected or when the system woke up from sleep, leaving the user with a frozen desktop.

Discover got two bug fixes. The software center's end-of-session calls will now function correctly even when running outside of a Plasma session. KDE developers also switched Discover over to using the safer org.kde.Shutdown interface for handling system shutdowns and restarts.

It used to be possible for a notification to include malicious HTML that could, for example, reference file:///dev/random as an image source. This would cause the system to try and render an infinite stream of data, filling up system memory and crashing the desktop. Plasma 6.4.6 brings a patch that sanitizes these image URLs, adding extra checks to confirm that the source is a valid, regular local file before attempting to display it.

Other updates include a fix for the timer applet, which now makes its digits respect the active system color scheme. The KMenuEdit tool no longer crashes when it encounters a malformed command line or when you try to sort an empty selection.

The System Monitor's predecessor, libksysguard, had a crash fixed that occurred when saving a preset. For mouse users, the system settings page for remapping mouse buttons is functional again. And finally, the print manager received an update to correctly display marker levels for printers that only have a single marker.

You can check out the full changelog here.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 5:45 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

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Microsoft's current head of Windows, Pavan Davuluri, has posted on X saying that the future of the platform is one that is "evolving into an agentic OS," weeks after the company reorganized the Windows division internally to better position it to bring an AI-powered Windows to market.

The post is more about Microsoft Ignite and how customers are using Windows as an AI platform, but it does reaffirm Microsoft's plans to push Windows into becoming an agentic OS, one that the company has teased multiple times over the last few months.

The post has seen major pushback from people online, with various opinions all stating roughly the same thing. Nobody wants an AI powered version of Windows. "Stop this non-sense. No one wants this," reads one post. "Bro, straight up, nobody wants this," reads another.

In fact, a majority of the replies to Davuluri's tweet are negative, with a handful showing optimism about the future of Windows. The rest? Nobody is interested or thinks Microsoft deserves to be trying to turn Windows into an AI-first agentic platform.

This doesn't appear to be a small vocal minority, either. In almost all coverage about the future of Windows being an agentic one, a large chunk of reactions from people are often pushing back against Microsoft's vision. "You are getting overwhelmingly negative feedback about all this AI stuff. And yet you persevere. Why?" asks one X user.

It's clear that Windows' reputation is at an all time low right now, and Microsoft's insistence on pushing towards an AI-powered future is not helping things. Many customers want Windows to be a platform that gets out of the way, but the last few years have seen Windows become enshittified in unapologetic ways.

The changelog for KB5068861 is given below:

Highlights

• This update addresses security issues for your Windows operating system.

   

Improvements

This security update contains fixes and quality improvements from KB5067036 (released October 28, 2025). The following summary outlines key issues addressed by this update. Also, included are available new features. The bold text within the brackets indicates the item or area of the change.

• [Gaming]

   

  • Fixed: This update addresses an issue that affects gaming handheld devices. These devices were unable to stay in low-power states, which caused faster battery drain.

     

  • Fixed: This update addresses an issue on some handheld gaming devices where after signing in using the built-in Gamepad, the controller might not respond in apps for about five seconds, causing a delay. After you submit your password or PIN, the touch keyboard on the sign-in screen hides automatically.

     

• [Storage] Fixed: This update addresses an issue that could cause some Storage Spaces to become inaccessible or Storage Spaces Direct to fail when creating a storage cluster.

   

• [System utilities (known issue)] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where closing Task Manager with the Close button didn’t fully end the process, leaving background instances that could slow performance over time. This might occur after installing KB5067036.

   

• [Voice Access] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where Voice Access failed during initial setup if no microphone was connected and the voice model wasn’t installed.

   

• [Window management] Fixed: This update addresses an issue where selecting the desktop could unexpectedly open Task View.

   

• [Networking] Fixed: This update fixes an issue in the HTTP.sys request parser, a Windows component that reads and processes HTTP requests. The parser allowed a single line break within HTTP/1.1 chunk extensions, where the RFC 9112 standard requires a carriage return and line feed (CRLF) sequence to terminate each chunk. This can cause a parsing discrepancy when front end proxies are a part of the setup.
  
  To turn off strict parsing, use the following registry key:

   

  Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Http\Parameters]

   

  value: "HttpAllowLenientChunkExtParsing"=dword:00000001

   

  Data to be set: 1

   

The changelog for KB5067112 is given below:

Highlights

• This update addresses security issues for your Windows operating system.

   

Improvements

Source

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:31 pm AEST (my time).

News posts... 2023: 5,800+ | 2024: 5,700+ | 2025 (till end of October): 5,009

RIP Matrix

In a statement to Neowin, the Browser Choice Alliance accused Microsoft of bribing people to use Edge by offering them Microsoft Rewards points in return:

Rather than competing on the merits and letting users decide the best browser for their needs, Microsoft is now bribing users with the promise of Microsoft Rewards points that have real cash value. Microsoft should stand on the side of users instead of expanding its campaign to undermine consumer choice and lock out competing browsers.

For those unaware, the Browser Choice Alliance is a coalition involving several big names, including Google Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, and more. Its main mission is to increase and respect user choice when it comes to selecting a browser, specifically in Windows devices. It campaigns against dark pattern practices and criticizes Microsoft for resorting to an alternative dark pattern each time it is caught doing something nefarious in this area.

For additional context, Microsoft Rewards is a platform where you earn digital points for using Bing and Microsoft Edge. These accumulated points can then be redeemed for real world rewards such as Microsoft Store and Xbox gift cards, along with the option to enter sweepstakes for a chance to win physical hardware like the Xbox Series X and other items.

The Browser Choice Alliance has also highlighted other ways in which Microsoft is shifting customers to Edge in an anti-competitive manner. These include routing Microsoft 365 interactions to Edge, showing pop-up ads for Edge, promoting the browser when you make web searches for alternatives, and defaulting users back to Edge in certain cases. Although the Browser Choice Alliance hasn't announced a concrete action, such as a lawsuit, against Redmond yet, its website does urge regulators to take a look into this matter.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:30 pm AEST (my time).

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On October 14, Microsoft released the final Windows 10 cumulative update, after which the operating system no longer receives bug fixes or free security updates.

Both consumers and business customers can enroll in extended security updates (ESU), which continues to provide security updates for up to three years depending on the type of account.

Consumers can enroll in the ESU program by paying $30, using 1,000 Microsoft reward points, or using Windows Backup to synchronize their Windows settings with their Microsoft account. Those in the European Economic Area have more options, as they can receive ESU for free simply by logging in to Windows 10 with a Microsoft account or pay $30 to continue using a local account.

Business customers can use the ESU program for a total of three years, bringing the total cost per device to $427.

However, a bug has prevented some devices from enrolling in the ESU program, with Microsoft releasing an emergency fix today to resolve the issue. 

If you running Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC or are enrolled in the ESU program, you can install this update like normal by going into Settings, clicking on Windows Update, and manually performing a 'Check for Updates.'

As this update is mandatory, it will also automatically install on its own and prompt you to restart your device when it is completed.

After installing this update, Windows 10 ESU will be updated to build 19045.6575 and Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021 will be updated to build 19044.6575.

What's new in Windows 10 KB5068781

As Microsoft is no longer releasing new features or maintenance fixes for Windows 10, the KB5068781 update only resolves a bug erroneously stating that Windows 10 LTSC devices have reached end of support, even though they receive support until January 2027.

• [Update (known issue)] Fixed: After installing the October 14, 2025 Windows update (KB5066791), the message, "Your version of Windows has reached the end of support", might incorrectly display in the Windows Update Settings page. To view the page, click Start > Settings > Windows Update.

More importantly, this update includes Microsoft's Patch Tuesday security updates, which fix 63 flaws and one actively exploited elevation-of-privilege vulnerability.

Microsoft states that there are no known issues with this update.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:29 pm AEST (my time).

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Here is the summary of the update.

"This out-of-band (OOB) update is offered to consumer devices that are not enrolled in the Extended Security Updates (ESU) program for Windows 10. This update is cumulative and includes security fixes and improvements from the October 14, 2025, security update (KB5066791), in addition to the following:

• This update addresses an issue in the Windows 10 Consumer Extended Security Update (ESU) enrollment process, where the enrollment wizard may fail during enrollment. After applying this update, consumer devices should be able to successfully enroll in ESU using the ESU wizard.

Microsoft also notes that:

• Once enrollment is completed, your device will begin receiving Extended Security Updates via Windows Update.
• This update is marked as a security update for devices that are not enrolled in the Windows 10 consumer ESU as it resolves an issue that was preventing affected customers from receiving essential security updates.

You can find the support article here on Microsoft's website.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:26 pm AEST (my time).

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Now, Microsoft is making the feature generally available to everyone with the Windows November 2025 security update, bringing native support not just for 1Password but also Bitwarden.

Your passkeys automatically sync across your devices if you use 1Password. To set things up, you need the latest MSIX version of the 1Password app, which the company is rolling out to all users.

Once installed, a new onboarding prompt will guide you, or you can go into the app's settings. You then enable 1Password as the system authenticator by navigating to Windows Settings, then Accounts > Passkeys > Advanced Options, and flipping the toggle for 1Password.

As for Bitwarden, its integration is currently available in Beta. For the time being, you must install the desktop application from its GitHub repository to get the functionality. The company says it will be available through the standard desktop application install later.

Once enabled, it works just like the 1Password integration, allowing you to use passkeys from your Bitwarden vault for apps and browsers, even without the browser extension installed.

Microsoft's very own Password Manager, which many know from its integration in Edge, is also now a native plugin for Windows. The company is promising that your passkeys are securely synced across devices using your Microsoft account. Operations are protected by your Password Manager PIN and backed by Azure's Hardware Security Modules and Confidential Compute for extra security.

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing passkeys as an alternative to traditional passwords for a while now. Unlike passwords, passkeys offer phishing resistance and are impossible to guess since they are machine-generated and much longer than passwords.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:26 pm AEST (my time).

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In February 1982, Apple employee #8 Chris Espinosa faced a problem that would feel familiar to anyone who has ever had a micromanaging boss: Steve Jobs wouldn’t stop critiquing his calculator design for the Mac. After days of revision cycles, the 21-year-old programmer found an elegant solution: He built what he called the “Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set” and let Jobs design it himself.

This delightful true story comes from Andy Hertzfeld’s Folklore.org, a legendary tech history site that chronicles the development of the original Macintosh, which was released in January 1984. I ran across the story again recently and thought it was worth sharing as a fun anecdote in an age where influential software designs often come by committee.

Design by menu

Chris Espinosa started working for Apple at age 14 in 1976 as the company’s youngest employee. By 1981, while studying at UC Berkeley, Jobs convinced Espinosa to drop out and work on the Mac team full time.

Believe it or not, Chris Espinosa still works at Apple as its longest-serving employee. But back in the day, as manager of documentation for the Macintosh, Espinosa decided to write a demo program using Bill Atkinson’s QuickDraw, the Mac’s graphics system, to better understand how it worked. He chose to create a calculator as one of the planned “desk ornaments,” which were small utility programs that would ship with the Mac. They later came to be called “desk accessories.”

Espinosa thought his initial calculator design looked good, but Jobs had other ideas when he saw it. Hertzfeld describes the scene: “Well, it’s a start,” Steve said, “but basically, it stinks. The background color is too dark, some lines are the wrong thickness, and the buttons are too big.”

For several days, Espinosa would incorporate Jobs’s suggestions from the previous day, only to have Jobs find new faults with each iteration. It might have felt like a classic case of “design by committee,” but in this case, the committee was just one very particular person who seemed impossible to satisfy.

Rather than continue the endless revision cycle, Espinosa took a different approach. According to Hertzfeld, Espinosa created a program that exposed every visual parameter of the calculator through pull-down menus: line thickness, button sizes, background patterns, and more. When Jobs sat down with it, he spent about ten minutes adjusting settings until he found a combination he liked.

The approach worked. When given direct control over the parameters rather than having to articulate his preferences verbally, Jobs quickly arrived at a design he was satisfied with. Hertzfeld notes that he implemented the calculator’s UI a few months later using Jobs’s parameter choices from that ten-minute session, while Donn Denman, another member of the Macintosh team, handled the mathematical functions.

That ten-minute session produced the calculator design that shipped with the Mac in 1984 and remained virtually unchanged through Mac OS 9, when Apple discontinued that OS in 2001. Apple replaced it in Mac OS X with a new design, ending the calculator’s 17-year run as the primary calculator interface for the Mac.

Why it worked

Espinosa’s Construction Set was an early example of what would later become common in software development: visual and parameterized design tools. In 1982, when most computers displayed monochrome text, the idea of letting someone fine-tune visual parameters through interactive controls without programming was fairly forward-thinking. Later, tools like HyperCard would formalize this kind of idea into a complete visual application framework.

The primitive calculator design tool also revealed something about Jobs’s management process. He knew what he wanted when he saw it, but he perhaps struggled to articulate it at times. By giving him direct manipulation ability, Espinosa did an end-run around that communication problem entirely. Later on, when he returned to Apple in the late 1990s, Jobs would famously insist on judging products by using them directly rather than through canned PowerPoint demos or lists of specifications.

The longevity of Jobs’s ten-minute design session suggests the approach worked. The calculator survived nearly two decades of Mac OS updates, outlasting many more elaborate interface elements. What started as a workaround became one of the Mac’s most simple but enduring designs.

By the way, if you want to try the original Mac OS calculator yourself, you can run various antique versions of the operating system in your browser thanks to the Infinite Mac website.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 12:25 pm AEST (my time).

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When you install the latest version, the first thing you'd probably notice is that history-based autosuggestions now handle multi-line commands. History-based autosuggestions have been a part of Fish for a very long time, practically since its inception around 2005.

The feature suggests commands as you type based on your past commands. You can accept the full suggestion by pressing the right arrow key or Ctrl+F, or just grab the first word with Alt+Right Arrow.

UTF-8 is now the default character encoding Fish assumes, even if your system is not set up with a UTF-8 locale. Your old file paths using legacy encodings will still work fine, but they might render a little differently on the command line. A new feature also lets you get more specific with your terminal organization. There is now a fish_tab_title function that lets you set the title of the terminal tab independently from the main window title.

Digging a little deeper, developers will find that the standalone build mode is now the default. This change means that the shell's internal helper functions are embedded directly, so future updates will not break your currently running shells.

This version also requires at least Rust 1.85 to build, carrying on the work that started with its big Rust rewrite back in Fish 4.0. Fish no longer force-disables mouse capture, so you can use your mouse to move the cursor or select completion items in compatible terminals.

As for the bug fixes, a crash caused by an invalid function command has been fixed, and another that occurred when passing negative process IDs to the "wait" builtin on Linux machines is also gone. For anyone using MSYS2, issues with saving and loading universal variables have been resolved. Here's the full list of bug fixes:

• Fix the web-based config for Python 3.9 and older.
• Correct wrong terminal modes set by fish -c 'read; cat'.
• On VTE-based terminals, stop redrawing the prompt on resize to avoid glitches.
• On MSYS2, fix saving and loading of universal variables.
• Fix errors when using man for the commands !., :, [,{
• Fix build issues on illumos systems.
• Fix crash on invalid function command.
• Fix build on SPARC and MIPS Linux by disabling SIGSTKFLT.
• Fix crash when passing negative PIDs to the builtin wait.
• On Linux, fix status fish-path output when fish has been reinstalled since it was started.

You can check out the full changelog here.

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Posted Wednesday 12 November 2025 at 1:00 am AEST (my time).

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Microsoft has paused the rollout of an upcoming new feature for the File Explorer on Windows 11 that promoted "recommended" files in large thumbnails at the top of the File Explorer Home tab.

The feature has been in testing for a number of months, and began rolling out to production PCs for the first time on October 28. As of November 5, however, Microsoft has hit the breaks on rolling out this feature to the public.

The changelog for this update describes the feature as the following:

"The Recommended section in File Explorer now makes it easier to access files you frequently use or recently downloaded. To view this section on the homepage, turn on the Show Recommended section setting in File Explorer > Options. This feature is now available to all users, including those signed in with personal Microsoft accounts."

Alongside pausing the rollout of this feature, Microsoft has also paused the rollout of StorageProvider APIs for the File Explorer app. This feature would let third-party cloud storage providers show cloud-based placeholder files in File Explorer, similar to OneDrive. It's unclear why both features have been paused, or when they expected to resume rollout, as Microsoft hasn't said.

The changelog has been updated to say "These features previously listed in the October 2025 non-security update will roll out in a future date."

In the announcement post on GitHub, Belim says that the new UI is "more streamlined, less overwhelming, and makes the initial setup flow much easier for new or casual users." While it still looks a bit unorthodox when compared to WinUI-based apps for Windows 11, Flyoobe 2.0 indeed looks much better than previous releases.

Here is what is new in Flyoobe 2.0:

• Reduced complexity with fewer menus and visual clutter
• Cleaner layout with more breathing room
• Clear primary actions to keep guidance obvious
• Less text, more direction, less cognitive overload
• Overall a much friendlier first-time setup experience
• This matters, because an OOBE assistant should be something you can complete without prior knowledge or technical experience.

Note that Flyoobe 2.0 is a standalone preview release. The "stable" version 1.51 is available for download separately while the developer is busy upgrading the user interface to something more modern and streamlined.

You can download Flyoobe 2.0 from the app's GitHub repository (version 1.51 is available on the same page). Keep in mind that the repository is the only reliable source of the updates, as there are websites with similar or identical names that could potentially spread malware or other kinds of digital nastiness.

Flyoobe fully supports the latest Windows 11 version 25H2, so you can use it to upgrade, customize the out-of-box experience, tweak and debloat the operating system, run setup extensions, and more. However, given the nature of such tools, you should always back up important data when using them.

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Posted Tuesday 11 November 2025 at 12:54 pm AEST (my time).

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This latest version of Firefox does not support 32-bit Linux systems. Firefox 144 was the last release for these machines, so Firefox 145 and all versions after it will require a 64-bit setup. Mozilla recommends upgrading to a 64-bit OS to get the latest features and security updates. But if you cannot do that, the Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) version 140 will continue to receive security patches until September 2026.

To reduce fingerprinting, Firefox 145 introduces new privacy protections. Mozilla claims these defenses cut the percentage of users seen as unique by almost 50% when you are in Private Browsing or have Enhanced Tracking Protection set to "Strict".

In addition to that, you can now jot down notes directly in the browser's PDF viewer. This feature comes with a new comments sidebar where you add, edit, and delete your own comments.

If you are on Windows, you might see a new desktop launcher that replaces the existing desktop shortcut. The new launcher will launch Firefox if installed. Otherwise, it will prompt you to install it. Mozilla's logic is that this will help people who get a new computer and sync their old desktop via OneDrive, finding a Firefox shortcut but not the actual program.

Other changes include:

• You can now hover over a tab group's name to see a preview of the tabs inside it.
• The "Copy Link to Highlight" feature in the context menu lets you create a URL that directs someone to the specific text you had selected.
• Your saved passwords can now be accessed and managed directly from the sidebar.
• For developers, Firefox 145 adds support for the Atomics.waitAsync proposal in JavaScript and the Integrity-Policy HTTP header.
• Local translation models are now compressed using Zstandard, which reduces their download and storage size on your machine.

You can download Firefox 145 for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

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Posted Tuesday 11 November 2025 at 12:52 pm AEST (my time).

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