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By Susan Bradley
 
The upcoming December updates will begin Microsoft’s process of dribbling out Windows Copilot.
 
No question here — I’m raising the MS-DEFCON level to 2.

Upgrade the tool that you can use to upgrade everything else.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Oppenheimer' tops the chart, followed by Freelance'. ‘'The Creator' 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.

This weekend we published a feature looking at the performance improvements, or regressions, one can expect if they were to move from a clean-installed Windows 10 22H2 system to a clean-installed Windows 11 23H2 PC (similar to the one where we upgraded to Windows 11 22H2). What we generally noticed was that the differentials were typically within the margin of error or in the imperceptible zone, though there were situations where one was quite a beat ahead of the other.

You can finally turn off news in Windows Widgets in Windows 11. Earlier this year, the company promised to deliver the much-requested feature, and now every Windows 11 user, not only Windows Insiders, can clean the widgets board and make it work as it should have from the very beginning.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at the latest soft-wear from Microsoft, the potential release windows for Windows "12" (get it?), new preview builds with some puzzling features, the upcoming GTA "6" trailer, no Xbox Game Pass for Sony and Nintendo, and more.

Sayan Sen contributed to this feature, and also provided the benchmark graphics.
 
As you may be aware, we have been benchmarking different scenarios with the Intel Core i9-14900K sent to us. It provides an ultra-modern test bed to test Microsoft's flagship Windows 11 OS against the older, but more trusted, Windows 10 counterpart.
 
Tech and gaming enthusiasts will swear blindly that their choice of OS is the best: wherever you look online you will find different results, on the one hand, Windows 10 is better, on the other, Windows 11 should be your choice. It's a hard question to answer with so many different variations of hardware and software being used with test results, so why not try to answer it with some of the best hardware currently at our disposal.

As we near the end of 2023, the hype and excitement around the next version of Windows in the Windows and the general tech enthusiast community is palpable. That's because it is expected that Microsoft will be releasing the next major Windows version, casually referred to by the community as 'Windows 12' next year.

The recently released Dev Home App preview for Windows 11 offers several developer-related features to make life easier for code writers. But Microsoft wants to take an extra step and equip the app with "Advanced Windows Settings," a section with additional options and preferences that otherwise require more complicated actions to turn on/off or customize.

Earlier today, we reported about the first official mention of "Windows 11 24H2" and also speculated on how this could affect the supposed launch of the next Windows version, also called Windows '12' casually.

Even third-party apps can't bring up the Windows 10 taskbar on Windows 11 anymore.

If you haven't logged into your Google account in a long time, you should do it once, or your account may cease to exist. Google announced earlier this year that it would start deleting inactive Google accounts that haven't been used for at least two years, starting December 2023.

By Susan Bradley

For most Windows 10 and 11 users, including me, there have been no side effects as a result of November’s updates.

Nonetheless, there appear to be a few potholes in the road. That’s enough to make me cautious — I’m lowering the MS-DEFCON level to only 3.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Oppenheimer' tops the chart, followed by 'The Creator'. ‘Leo' 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.

A series of arrests that began in late August and continued into last week has sparked concerns that a relatively rare 'Scene' crackdown targeting the top of the so-called 'Piracy Pyramid' may be underway in the Nordic region. A long-running investigation involving Denmark's Special Crime Unit appears to be the common denominator. Coincidentally, several groups have stopped releasing.

In this episode of Microsoft Weekly, we look at the turmoil at OpenAI, artificial intelligence breakthroughs, installing Windows 11 version 23H2 on unsupported hardware, game anniversaries, app updates, small Windows 11 images, and more.

Windows 11 version 23H2-based tiny11 is finally available for download. This Windows 11 mod offers a lightweight image stripped of unnecessary components and steep hardware requirements, resulting in an installation taking about 8GB of disk space.

Notepad++ is an open source plain text editor for Windows that offers better functionality than the built-in Notepad tool of the operating system. Notepad++ is celebrating its 20th anniversary today.
 
The developer released Notepad++ 8.6 to celebrate the anniversary. The announcement of the new release reveals information about the past 20 years of the project.

Windows 11.1 and point updates make way more sense than Windows 11 22H2 and Windows 11 2023 Update.
Every time I see a big Windows 11 update I wonder why it wasn’t a Windows 11.1 or Windows 11.2 release. Instead, Microsoft has used a number of confusing ways to name Windows updates in recent years instead of a simple method like point releases.

There’s a devastating amount of heavy news these days. Psychology experts say you need to know your limits—and when to put down the phone.

The app is rumored to be deactivated and everything moved to Rewards, ending the weekly challenges and player streaks.

Windows 11 version 23H2 is now available for download with numerous neat improvements and new features (check out our review to learn more). Sadly, it still has steep hardware requirements, which make the OS inaccessible to people with older yet still perfectly capable Windows 10 devices. If you are unwilling to deal with such injustice but buying a new PC is not an option either, here is a guide detailing how to install Windows 11 version 23H2 on an unsupported computer.

Group Policies in Windows are a powerful tool for IT and system admins to control how various features can be deployed across managed Windows enterprise PCs, which is why related bugs like the one where a Settings group policy was broken annoyed and caused inconvenience to those affected.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released new preview updates with changes to make its operating systems compliant with European Union regulations. Those changes include the ability to uninstall Edge, decouple the OS from Bing, turn on third-party news feeds in Widgets, and more. Sadly, only EU citizens can enjoy those changes without messing with their PCs' software intestines. Other people must tweak Windows Registry to spoof their location, which can lead to unnecessary complications.
 
Luckily, there is a much simpler method that does not require editing the registry or faking your location. As it turned out (via Deskmodder), Windows manages new region policies using a JSON file inside the system32 folder. Modifying that file allows force-enabling specific features in unsupported regions. Here is how to do it.

This past week Microsoft released the Patch Tuesday updates for Windows 10 and also for Windows 11 for the month of November. Besides Patch Tuesday, the tech giant also released new dynamic updates to improve the WinRE on Windows 11 21H2, as well as Setup files for all Windows 11 versions, ie, 23H2, 22H2, and 21H2.
 
Besides Windows 11 though, Microsoft this time also released a dynamic update for Windows 10 as well which is meant to improve Setup binaries. The last such dynamic update for Windows 10 was released back in July via KB5028311.