7 Days: uBlock Origin workaround, biggest Xbox shakeup, and live TV on Netflix

A week of the biggest restructuring in Xbox history, Netflix planning live TV channels, and WhatsApp birthday reminders.

7 Days is a weekly roundup of picks of what's been happening in the world of technology - written with a dash of humor, a hint of exasperation, and an endless supply of (black) coffee.

This week's highlights include the EU going after Meta over addictive social media features, Cinnamon is getting full support for Wayland, Google Search broke all of its records during a World Cup match. Let's get started.

You can check out the recent issues of the 7 Days weekly roundup.

Biggest restructuring in Xbox history

There has been a seismic shift at Xbox after Asha Sharma took over as the CEO of the gaming division. Sharma previously talked about a "reset," which means Microsoft is undergoing the "most significant restructure in XBOX history," affecting 3,200 members.

While the changes will continue through the 2027 fiscal year, about 1,600 Xbox staff are being let go now. Five teams from first-party studios are being spun off as independent companies or sold off, including Compulsion Games, Ninja Theory, Undead Labs, Double Fine, and Arkane.

Doom-fame studio id Software was a part of the drama. Despite rumors of a collapse, the studio posted on social media that the team remains large enough to support game and engine development despite the layoffs.

A report from the fintech firm OnDeck still listed Microsoft as the world's second-most valuable brand after Apple, with a value of $424.8 billion. Meanwhile, Sharma has been selected as a member of a new US Federal Reserve task force that will advise the government on productivity and jobs.

Workaround for uBlock Origin

While Google Chrome decided to say goodbye to uBlock Origin, Brave has other plans. Thanks to a recent update, it has found a workaround to keep supporting MV2 extensions (and uBlock Origin). Brave has made under-the-hood changes to automatically detect and replace known Web Store MV2 extensions with Brave-hosted equivalents.

War against Meta

One thing Meta finds itself in hot water over is the perception that many of its social media features are intentionally addictive. In its latest, the company could face a huge fine from the European Commission over the addictive design it allegedly uses on Instagram and Facebook. Meta will have to implement several changes in its platforms, including disabling autoplay and infinite scroll by default.

Live TV on Netflix

Netflix emerged as a platform for people who wanted a break from cable years ago. Now, the streaming giant wants to expand its catalog by adding live channels that will appear as tiles alongside on-demand content. It was reported that Netflix executives worry about dropping watch times, which may prompt people to cancel their subscription. The company is also planning to bundle other streaming services to offer a one-stop shop experience.

Our Features

Our coffee-powered team published a platter of editorials, opinion posts, and guides. Check them out:

• How to quickly launch multiple apps with a single action in Windows 11
• How to remove background from screenshots in Windows with just a few clicks
• Hands-on with the upcoming taskbar changes in Windows 11
• How to set custom folder icons in Windows 11 File Explorer

This week in software news

Catch up on some of the latest software news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Proceed with caution: The new Steam Machine got the official drivers to run Windows 11. However, Valve cautioned that it cannot provide "Windows on Steam Hardware" support, so you should be prepared to handle issues if things go south.

Small but useful: You can now pin up to 20 items on top of your library in the Spotify app, up from the previous limit of four. The small change is available across all platforms and is one of the highly requested features.

Vivaldi 8.1: The latest Vivaldi update has arrived with many bug fixes focusing on auto-hide UI features and complex tab management. Moreover, its browser engine has been upgraded to Chrome 150 to maintain web compatibility and security standards.

Files 4.2 is here: The popular file manager for Windows 11 has a long list of new features that enhance navigation, multitasking, dual-pane workflows, tab management, and other quality-of-life improvements.

One-click migration: Tuta rolled out a new automated tool to migrate all your emails to Tuta Mail in a single click, along with new Calendar features and standalone Android and iOS apps for Tuta Drive.

DLSS performance boost: NVIDIA released the Game Ready Driver 610.74, which improves the DLSS performance for DOOM: Dark Ages/Revelations and AC Black Flag Resynced. Tencent Meeting should also work better after the update, and its flickering issue is fixed.

New on WHQL: Intel released the new 32.0.101.8861 non-WHQL driver with official support for some high-profile games releasing soon on PC, including Halo: Campaign Evolved and Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced.

This week in hardware news

Catch up on some of the latest hardware news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Lightning faaaast: Samsung outperformed Micron with its new PM1763 enterprise SSD, which promises speeds of up to 28.4 GB/s on the 16TB variant, making it the fastest of its kind. The company claims the PM1763 can transfer a massive 40 GB LLM in as little as 1.4 seconds.

Samsung is unpacking: The South Korean giant has sent out invites for its upcoming Galaxy Unpacked event on July 22. Alongside several AI updates, the event is expected to have devices with “innovative form factors.”

New from Nothing: The company unveiled the Phone (4b) with a refreshed design, a Snapdragon 6 Gen 4, a 120Hz AMOLED display, and a 50 MP camera. Starting July 17, it will be available in black/white/blue colors in an 8GB/128GB configuration.

What's new for Switch 2: In light of the EU regulations, Nintendo shared what's changing for the portable gaming console. Switch 2 with a replaceable battery will weigh 10 grams more but won't have any functional differences. The same applies to the new Joy-Cons in different regions.

NVIDIA's middle ground: The company is reportedly developing an "SE" variant of the RTX 5090 to sit between the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080. Featuring 14,080 CUDA cores, the new GPU will have lower performance and VRAM than the 5090.

A small setback: NVIDIA has been the unofficial flagbearer of the AI race. But its next-gen AI rack system, Kyber NVL144, has been pushed back to 2028 (12-month setback) due to manufacturing difficulties with its key circuit board. Kyber NVL144 turns the chips into a single unit so they can work together.

GeForce NOW got new muscles: Good news for Canadian subscribers is that the RTX 5080-powered servers NVIDIA was expanding rapidly earlier this year are now rolling out in Toronto. GeForce NOW has got big games, including Black Flag.

This week in Google News

Catch up on some of the latest Google news updates that arrived throughout the week:

What will power AI? Google has pumped money into the Germany-based Proxima Fusion, which is developing a net-energy fusion demonstrator called Alpha. Seen as a futuristic source to power AI, the prototype is expected to see the light of day sometime in the early 2030s.

Improving healthcare: Google handed over the Open Health Stack (OHS) project to the Linux Foundation to make digital healthcare tools more accessible and collaborative, giving developers a common set of tools for building digital health applications. It was launched back in 2023 in collaboration with WHO.

Google broke records: The search giant recorded its highest ever usage for Google Search during the FIFA World Cup after Argentina scored the winning goal in a match against Egypt. As the tournament intensifies, we might see Google unlock even higher footfall.

Making AI faster: Most of our AI lives in the cloud, but Google wants to make it more local. Its new LiteRT.js library enables machine learning models to run locally in the browser rather than on the server. Google's new runtime delivers 3x greater speeds over existing solutions on current hardware.

This week in Apple News

Catch up on some of the latest Apple news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Bigger battery on Pro: iPhone 18 Pro/Pro Max could arrive with bigger batteries than on last year's Pro models, according to a Chinese leaker. For the US market, the alleged battery capacities are 4288 mAh (iPhone 18 Pro) and 4252 mAh (iPhone 18 Pro Max), respectively. However, the cost behind the perk is that the devices will be heavier and thicker.

Serious about CXMT: Building on previous updates, it was reported that Apple is pursuing CXMT as its DRAM chip partner more seriously than before, and has begun testing. It's said that atleast China will be the market where devices with CXMT chips will be sold.

Not so soon: Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected this year, but it may not be available to grab right after launch. With an expected price tag between $2,300 and $2,500, iPhone Fold's delivery wait times could be four to six weeks, or even longer.

One more beta: Apple's latest lineup of software updates reached Beta 3 this week. iOS 27/iPadOS 27 Beta 3 brought more Apple Intelligence features across the system, fixed some known issues, and added some new ones.

Do you want iPhone Air? New information from the rumor mill suggests the next-gen iPhone Air will get a 3,500 mAh battery to fix one of the biggest drawbacks. The device is also expected to get the 2nm A20 chip.

They stole our secrets: Apple dragged OpenAI, its subsidiary io, and two former Apple employees to court, accusing them of stealing confidential information and trade secrets to support OpenAI's consumer hardware.

This week in Meta news

Catch up on some of the latest Meta, WhatsApp, and Instagram updates that arrived throughout the week:

WhatsApp Birthday Reminder app: If you also get grilled for forgetting your friends' birthdays, WhatsApp's new feature might come to the rescue. WhatsApp is working on a feature to notify people when it's a contact's birthday, reliving Facebook's early days, when writing on someone's wall was a tradition.

New AI powerhouse: Meta is building its first data center in Canada, with 1GW of capacity to power its AI services. While there are major concerns, the data center will aim to be as water-efficient as possible to reduce usage, and the company is working to become water-positive by 2030.

New models from Meta: Muse Image is the first image model from Meta's Superintelligence Labs that understands complex prompts and visual references. MSL also released the upgraded Muse Spark 1.1 multimodal reasoning model to challenge its rivals from OpenAI and Anthropic.

Controversial move: One thing that stirred controversy is that Muse Image can generate AI images based on publicly available Instagram images simply by tagging another user. However, Meta added a button that lets you opt out of exposing your images to Muse Image.

This week in AI news

Catch up on the latest artificial intelligence news updates that arrived throughout the week:

Claude won't follow commands: AI users flooded the web with reports of Claude Sonnet 5 "misbehaving" and failing to follow instructions. One user commented that it won't even do the actual work, and instead accuses them of trying to commit fraud. In other news, Anthropic extended promotional access for Claude Fable 5 until July 12 as OpenAI was preparing for the GPT-5.6 launch.

New from OpenAI: The AI giant went past the initial preview and turned on global access for the new GPT-5.6 series: Sol, Terra, and Luna models. A new "max reasoning effort" setting works with the flagship model Sol to improve reasoning performance. Microsoft announced day-one integration for the series into Microsoft 365 Copilot and selected them as preferred models.

ChatGPT Work and new app: The latest models also power a new agentic experience called ChatGPT Work, which is designed to handle work across apps, files, and workflows. It also launched a unified ChatGPT desktop app for Windows/Mac users that integrates Codex and includes a built-in browser.

The voice of ChatGPT: A major upgrade for ChatGPT Voice could make the Advanced Voice Mode feel outdated. It enables ChatGPT to speak, hear, and listen at the same time, instead of taking turns like a traditional voice assistant.

This week in Linux news

Catch up on the latest updates from the world of Linux and open-source:

Good news for Mint lovers: Its development team announced that not just a screensaver but Wayland will be fully supported in the next version of Cinnamon, expected to ship around Christmas this year. There will be several desktop enhancements, security fixes, and NVIDIA improvements.

Checking out: Ubuntu 25.10 "Questing Quokka" lived its life to the fullest before reaching EOL on July 9. Yes, non-LTS releases only get nine months of support. In other words, your machine won't get any security updates, and you'll need to upgrade to Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

Good news for Linux 7.2: The upcoming Linux version should arrive on time, as the recently released Linux 7.2 RC2 looks normal. For comparison, it's smaller than the RC2 for Linux 7.1. Recent RCs have been bulky due to extensive AI use, and Torvalds asked developers to hold their horses on AI.

Boost for WSL: A new code submission from Microsoft to the Mesa graphics library drastically improves AV1 video processing on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). With just 900 lines of code, the patch enables Linux apps in WSL to request accelerated AV1 encoding.

This week in Microsoft News

In one of the hottest stories, several IT admins were fed up and frustrated with Microsoft products and apps. Microsoft finally fixed one of the biggest headaches of reinstalling Windows and confirmed default organization backup for Windows 11 26H2.

You can check out Ivan's freshly baked Microsoft Weekly roundup to catch up on all the interesting stories this week.

This week in science news

Catch up on some of the latest science and out-of-this-world updates that arrived throughout the week:

Time without start: Uppsala University researchers developed a new method to measure elapsed time without needing a starting point by observing how helium atoms change after short light pulses.

Mushrooms Become RAM: Common edible mushrooms can store digital memory, just like computer chips. This interesting biological discovery could eventually help us build greener, smarter electronic devices.

No guessing game: Researchers found a clear limit to how much screen detail the human eye can actually see. This means super high-resolution displays often waste extra pixels you will never even notice.

Darkest fabric: Scientists created the darkest fabric ever by mimicking bird feathers, which trap almost all light while remaining very flexible and breathable, making it ideal for new technology and everyday clothes.

New Green Fridges: There is a cool way to freeze things using charged ions instead of harmful gases. This clever trick could finally make our home fridges and air conditioners safe and green.

Are aliens real? A study from last year suggests that life randomly forming on early Earth was incredibly unlikely due to complex biological rules. It even suggests advanced aliens might have purposely seeded our planet instead.

What else in gaming?

The latest issue of Pulasthi's Weekend PC Game Deals curates several exciting games on sale this week. Epic Games put up Nova Lands and Tattoo Tycoon to keep as part of its giveaway refresh, and Xbox Free Play Days added MLB The Show 26, The Alters, and STUFFED.

That said, here are some more stories from the gaming world:

• Ubisoft's Black Flag remake sells two million copies on day one, sets franchise records
• Microsoft reportedly hands Fallout to Obsidian as part of Xbox reset
• Sitting finally comes to Minecraft as a feature, no more tricks or mods

From the review corner

This week, Steven got his hands on the Lexar PLAY X 1TB 2230 SSD, which is primarily intended for storage expansion on handhelds and consoles. Scoring 9.5, the SSD delivers awesome PCIe 4x4 speeds, includes a 2280 bracket, and is built for gaming rigs. However, there are a few cons, including its price tag, and it could have shipped with a graphene heatsink.

UGREEN NASync

We got two review units from UGREEN: NASync DXP4800 GT and DXP2800 GT. These come with great build quality, very affordable 4+2-bay/2+2-bay, great power efficiency, and software improvements. On the downside, they still feature DDR4 memory, hard-to-access internals, a non-removable eMMC bootloader, and NVMe limited to PCIe 3.0 x2.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced

The new title making the rounds is Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, marking the return of the decade-old game. Pulasthi wrote in his detailed review that the game features an unmatched sense of open-world freedom, satisfying ship sailing and combat, and gorgeous worlds and islands. However, it has annoying slow-motion finishers and spammy melee combat.

More price drops!

We got you covered with some hot tech deals all week. For some reason, if you missed out on a great discount, here is a summary of some recent deals that are still alive:

• TCL iFFALCON MiniLED Smart TVs: $400+ (Amazon US)

• Logitech G PRO X Superlight 2 SE - $99.99 (29% off on Amazon)

• G.SKILL Ripjaws V DDR4 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 CL16 and CL18 (up to 18% off on Amazon)

• Skullcandy Crusher Wireless headphones - $89.99 (22% off on Amazon)

• TP-Link Deco 7 Pro BE63 (up to 3 packs) (up to 30% off on Amazon)

• Belkin 2-in-1 Qi2 Wireless Charging Dock - $79.99 (33% off on Amazon)

• TP-Link Tri-Band BE9300 WiFi 7 Router - $149.99 on Amazon US (40% off)

• Turtle Beach Victrix Pro BFG Reloaded - $149.99 (29% off on Amazon)

   

To view all of our recent deals, click here.

So, these were some of the biggest tech news and other updates from this week. There will be more issues of our 7 Days series in the coming weeks and months, so stay tuned. You can also support Neowin by registering for a free member account or subscribing to extra member benefits, along with an ad-free tier option.

Have a great weekend!

Source

Hope you enjoyed this news post. Feedback welcome.

Posted Monday 13 July 2026 at 7:55 am AEST (my time).

News posts: 2023 5,800+ | 2024 5,700+ | 2025 5,700+ | 2026 (to end of June) 2,475

RIP Matrix