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The latest Windows 11 Dev Channel build includes a new actions menu in the Settings app, which lets you configure which suggested actions appear in Click To Do.

It has been almost a year since Google started to implement changes on YouTube to block content blockers on the platform.  The fight against adblockers started in 2023 with "Ad blockers are not allowed by YouTube" banners being shown to affected users.
 
Google has been testing new implementations since then, including server-side ads that break adblockers, or by throwing jabs against competing browsers like Firefox.

Reports on Reddit and other online forums suggest that Google has started to intensify its fight against content blockers once again on YouTube.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Captain America: Brave New World' tops the chart, followed by 'The Gorge'. 'The Electric State' completes the top three.
 
 The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at the latest Windows preview builds with some interesting changes and Settings app improvements, quite a lot of browser updates, gaming news, new AMD product reviews, useful Windows utilities, an Xbox handheld (finally) and a lot more.

Popular Windows configuration utility NTLite received a couple of updates this week and they bring several changes and improvements. Support for Windows UEFI CA 2023 certificates has been added following Microsoft's recent PowerShell script update.

Windows 11's Snipping Tool will soon improve marking up photos with a new Drag & Hold feature.
Windows Insiders can test out some powerful new features for Snipping Tool and Notepad. Updates to both apps are rolling out to the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11.

Popular torrent site TorrentGalaxy has been offline for two weeks, with no explanation from its operators. Members of the site's staff are also being kept in the dark, and many fear the site may never return. To the delight of copyright holders, the site's troubles are now being felt across the torrent ecosystem after the site's upload bots also stopped working.

The DISMTools app lets you interact with DISM through a GUI instead of using commands, and here's how to get started.
On Windows 11 (and 10), DISMTools is a free, non-Microsoft open-source graphical user interface (GUI) designed to enhance and simplify the use of Microsoft's Deployment Imaging Service and Management Tool (DISM).

Stardock released its first Fences® 6 beta today – a major update to its popular Windows desktop organization software with over 20 million downloads. Fences is the easiest way to organize your desktop workflow by neatly organizing apps, files, and icons on the desktop.

Microsoft has released Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 11 24H2, 23H2, and 22H2. The 24H2 update is provided via KB5053598, while the 23H2 and 22H2 updates are delivered via KB5053602. You will be on build versions 26100.3476, 22631.5039, and 22621.5039, respectively, after applying the update.

It's the second Tuesday of the month, which means it's Patch Tuesday time again. As such, today, Microsoft is rolling out the monthly security update (also called "B release") for February 2025 on Windows Server 20H2 and Windows 10 for the latest supported versions, 20H2, 21H2, and 22H2.

Here is a reminder for Firefox users sticking to some old versions: on March 14, 2025, outdated Firefox releases will lose some of their functionality due to the root certificate expiration (a trusted authority that verifies the authenticity of websites, add-ons and software updates). Affected features include add-ons or extensions, DRM content playback, and more.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Anora' tops the chart, followed by 'Captain America: Brave New World'. 'The Gorge' completes the top three.
 
 The data for our weekly download chart is estimated by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.
 
Downloading content without permission is copyright infringement. These torrent download statistics are only meant to provide further insight into piracy trends. All data are gathered from public resources.

If you are one of the lucky owners (or unlucky, considering the staggering amount of issues plaguing these cards) of one of Nvidia's new RTX 50 graphics cards, you might want to download the latest hotfix driver. Nvidia released version 572.75 to address two important issues in the lineup.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at Copilot updates, PowerToys updates, Windows 11 preview build updates, browser updates... A lot of updates! We also have some hardware reviews, useful guides for Chrome users, and more.

Update 3/9/25: After receiving concerns about the use of the term 'backdoor' to refer to these undocumented commands, we have updated our title and story.
 
The ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif and used by over 1 billion units as of 2023 contains undocumented commands that could be leveraged for attacks.

It is no secret that Microsoft wants more users to update to Windows 11 from their Windows 10 systems. According to the latest Statcounter estimations, Windows 11 is currently at 38% and it is still significantly behind 10 which has close to 60%.

Recently, Google completed the removal of Manifest V2-based extensions in Google Chrome, causing plenty of extensions to stop working and generating a tidal wave of frustrated customers. While the change affects all extensions that have not been upgraded to Manifest V3, the biggest noise is generated among uBlock Origin users, a popular content-blocking extension for modern browsers.y friend  

AMD has finally announced the release date and prices of its upcoming Ryzen 9000X3D processors. The Ryzen 9 9900X3D and the Ryzen 9 9950X3D are coming March 12, 2025, priced at $599 and $699, respectively. The date was announced by AMD's Jack Huynh on X:

By Susan Bradley
 
As usual, I recommend caution just before Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday and thus have raised the MS-DEFCON level to 2.
 
Let others (aka me) take the slings and arrows. There’s simply no way that those interested in headlines just as clickbait can assess the implications of any Patch Tuesday in just a few hours. I do some testing on my assorted PCs, follow other experts closely, separate fact from fiction, and aggregate what I learn into a Patch Watch column you can trust.

Extracting just the audio from a video file is much easier with the latest addition to PowerToys.

Microsoft's PowerToys has a new toy for power users to play with. The latest update to the app adds media transcoding support through Advanced Paste.

Gamers Nexus (2.42M subscribers)
 
March 6, 2025
 
Video length: 31m 38s
 
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 video card is shipping alongside the RX 9070 XT and surprised us with its efficiency. The power-to-performance ratio is strong on the RX 9070 non-XT, seemingly finding a "sweet spot" of balance between power consumption and the output. The 9070 and 9070 XT are known to have a weirdly small $50 gap between them, at an MSRP of $550 and $600, but in either case, the two have ganged-up on the NVIDIA RTX 5070 GPU to effectively invalidate its existence -- even more than NVIDIA already did. This review benchmarks the performance of the RX 9070 vs. the 9070 XT, RTX 5070, RX 6700 XT, 6600, and plenty more.

Eleven11bot infects video recorders, with the largest concentration of them in the US.

A newly discovered network botnet comprising an estimated 30,000 webcams and video recorders—with the largest concentration in the US—has been delivering what is likely to be the biggest denial-of-service attack ever seen, a security researcher inside Nokia said.

Gamers Nexus (2.41M subscribers)
 
March 6, 2025
 
Video length: 31m 42s
 
AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 GPUs are launching tomorrow. This benchmark and review of the AMD RX 9070 XT (Sapphire Pulse model) looks at the gaming performance, ray tracing, power consumption, and efficiency vs. the NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti, 5070, AMD's prior 7900 XT, and plenty more GPUs. The benchmarks for the RX 9070 non-XT will go live a little later on our channel. The 9070 XT has an MSRP of $600, with the 9070 at $550 MSRP. "Actual" pricing is TBD, as the NVIDIA launch has certainly set a current meta of pricing and availability issues. We'll follow-up on the price situation once the cards are publicly released. These benchmarks look at the best GPUs available in early 2025, including prior generation cards that you might be able to buy used. We're expecting another round of lower-end cards (likely the 5060, 5060 Ti, and possible 9060) in a few months. We're also waiting to see if Intel ships a B770 or equivalent higher-end Battlemage GPU.

Mozilla recently updated Firefox's Terms of Use, brewing controversy and concern among users about its stance on data privacy and sharing with third-party vendors.