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Microsoft today announced the release of Windows 11 Preview Build 22523 to Dev Channel Insiders. In this build, Microsoft has moved a couple of settings from Control Panel into the Settings app. This build also comes with several bug fixes. Find the full change log below.

In 2013, the European Union slapped a massive $731 Million fine on Microsoft for failing to offer users a choice to set a default browser. 8 years have passed since then, has the Redmond company learned its lesson? Vivaldi's CEO/Co-founder Jón von Tetzchner, says no.
 
Tetzchner founded Opera browser along with Geir Ivarsøy in the mid-90s, before leaving the company in 2011. He founded Vivaldi Technologies in 2013, though the browser they created was released a couple of years later.
 
Around the same timeframe, in 2015, Microsoft unveiled Edge, built with the in-house Chakra core engine, as the new default browser in Windows 10. More importantly, this was the first step in replacing/retiring the legacy Internet Explorer.
 
What annoyed users is that Windows 10 complicated the way to set a different browser as the default handler. You need to jump through a couple of hoops in the Settings app, before selecting the application of your choice. This move was heavily criticized, notably by Mozilla. Fast-forward to 2021, and the same applies to Windows 11, though the new Edge is based on the Blink engine, from the Chromium open source project. For reference, Vivaldi, Opera also use the same engine.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' tops the chart, followed by ‘The Last Duel'. 'No Time to Die' completes the top three.

Windows spotlight is a feature that automatically downloads and displays Bing pictures on your lock screen. The feature is available on both Windows 11 and Windows 10. But in Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22518, the spotlight feature has gotten better as it now takes care of your desktop backgrounds.
 
Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22518 has a new feature called Spotlight collection that changes your desktop background automatically every day. To put it simply, Windows 11 will now automatically change both the lock screen and background of your PC.

Microsoft has updated Edge Stable today to version 96.0.4664.93.
 
The update is part of the monthly security update for Edge and brings fixes for a large number of security issues.
 
The update fixes the following security issues, but Microsoft has unfortunately not assigned them a severity level yet or revealed if they are being actively exploited. On the Chrome blog however most of the issues are listed as High Severity.

We are the close of yet another week, and it's time to recap everything that went on in the Microsoft-verse. This was an exciting week due to some surprise announcements, Halo Infinite's campaign release, and a significant Windows 11 Dev Channel build. Let's dive into all that and more in our weekly digest for December 4 - December 10.

Alexa Internet

Alexa was founded as an independent company in 1996 and acquired by Amazon in 1999 for $250 million in stock. Alexa provides web traffic data, global rankings, and other information on over 30 million websites.[3] Alexa estimates website traffic based on a sample of millions of Internet users using browser extensions, as well as from sites that have chosen to install an Alexa script.[4] As of 2020, its website is visited by over 400 million people every month. Occasional disputes over its claims occur, but it is overall very comprehensive [citation needed]. Alexa Internet, Inc. is an American web traffic analysis company based in San Francisco. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.

Today, Stardock released Fences 4, an app that allows users to automatically organize shortcuts and icons on their PC desktops into custom-sized spaces called fences. Building upon previous versions of Fences that are used by millions of users of Microsoft Windows, Fences 4 introduces new features that will streamline workflows while keeping desktops organized.

Windows 11 is getting a new "Voice Access" feature to control the operating system using your voice and a microphone.
 
While Microsoft has already supported dictation via a microphone, the ability to use your voice to execute commands in Windows has been limited to specific applications.
 
In the Windows 11 preview build 22518 released today, users can now use the Voice Access feature to launch or close applications, switch to the Desktop, minimize and maximize windows, switch applications, select items, scroll, edit text, and more.

Google announced today that it has taken action to disrupt the Glupteba botnet that now controls more than 1 million Windows PCs around the world, growing by thousands of new infected devices each day.

The Mozilla Firefox 95 web browser is now available for download ahead of its December 7th official launch for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.
 
Firefox 95 is here as the last release of the web browser in 2021, coming seven weeks after Firefox 94. It’s not a big update, but it brings a few cool changes to make your web browsing experience more enjoyable and secure.
 
This release further improves the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature with a new right-click context menu option called “Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left/Right Side,” which lets you move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to either the left or right side of a video.

Windows 11 has brought with it a lot of visual changes and a bunch of exciting new features, but that’s obviously not the end as Microsoft is currently working on many new features and changes that will be available in future Windows 11 updates. One of the features that the company is currently testing is a subtle yet important change in the Network and internet setting.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' tops the chart, followed by ‘The Last Duel'. 'Ron's Gone Wrong' completes the top three.

We are at the end of yet another week, which means that it is time to recap what happened in the world of Microsoft in the past few days. This week was quite eventful, especially if you're interested in news related to Microsoft Edge, Windows 11 builds, and a festive Windows Ugly Sweater. Read on to to check out the weekly digest for the week of November 28 - December 3.

Since it's been almost two months since Windows 11 started generally rolling out, we thought it would be interesting to see what feedback the public has for the OS so far. We have discussed the feature-set in detail through our Closer Look articles, and I have also detailed my personal thoughts on which features I love and hate in Windows 11. So it's only natural that we review what the general public wants from the OS too.

Pop-ups range from straightforward to cheeky. One calls Chrome "so 2008."

If you're a Google Chrome user setting up a new Windows PC, the most important feature of Microsoft Edge is the ability to download Chrome. Microsoft is apparently aware of this behavior and is doing something about it: Neowin has spotted new Edge pop-ups that specifically try to dissuade users from downloading and installing Chrome, a change that I promise I didn't know about when I wrote about Microsoft's annoying promotion of Microsoft Edge literally yesterday.

So far, panic about the new Covid variant has outpaced actual information.

Starting last Friday, the race was on—between a virus and information about it. And for a while, the information moved faster, even though there was hardly any of it.

Edge can succeed on its merits, and Microsoft needs to start acting like it.

If Microsoft really wants to "put you first," it needs to tweak its strategy with Edge.

The browser will give you the option to make payments through Zip

Microsoft is tacking on a “buy now, pay later” extension to Edge that prompts users to use short-term financing service Zip (formerly QuadPay) when making a purchase on the browser.

ThisIsWin11 (TIW11) version 0.93.0 was released by developer built Bybel earlier today on GitHub. This third-party tool allows for more Windows 11 customization and the maker even touts the app as "The real Power Toys for Windows 11".

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Venom: Let There Be Carnage' tops the chart, followed by ‘No Time to Die'. 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' completes the top three.

Microsoft ships a useful tool called the Group Policy Editor, commonly known as Gpedit.msc or just GPEDIT, with the Pro version of its Windows operating system. It is handy for enabling or disabling functions of various elements in the OS, by changing Registry values, but in a more user-friendly way. Unfortunately, Home Edition users don't get access to this nifty tweaking utility. But, there is a way to enable the Group Policy Editor on Windows 11 Home.

Microsoft frequently updates multiple versions of Windows, be it through its regular Patch Tuesday updates that happen at the second Tuesday of every month, or optional updates, or even out-of-band fixes. While many people are annoyed by continual updates as they sometimes interrupt their workflow, they are arguably necessary in most cases due to the security holes they plug and the software issues they fix.
 
Although I personally have no complaints about the frequency of the updates themselves, I do have some concerns about the lack of information and context that Microsoft provides through its built-in Windows Update setting. Case in point is above where I have a bunch of updates pending on my Windows 11 machine but I can't directly find out what exactly they update or fix. You'll have a similar user experience in Windows 10 as well.

When you run searches on Windows 11 from the operating system's Start Menu, you will get local results as well as web-based results powered by Bing by default. Microsoft introduced web search functionality in Windows 10 and has kept the feature in Windows 11.
 
Many Windows 11 users see web searching as a way for Microsoft to promote its Bing search engine, and not as something that adds value to the search functionality. Web Search integration broke Windows Search at least once on Windows 10, and there is the chance that this is going to happen again.

Microsoft released Microsoft Edge 96 last week and a small bug fix and performance update on November 23, 2021. The new version of Microsoft Edge includes several improvements for users of the stable channel.