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A three-way fight down to the wire as the ground effect era comes to a close.

Windows 11 now lets you control the widgets that appear in the Lock Screen, and here's how.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Predator: Badlands' tops the chart, followed by 'Nuremberg'. 'One Battle After Another' 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.

Check it out, you can now create tables using Markdown in Notepad, and here's how.

This week's news recap is here, bringing you an overview of the latest stories in the world of Microsoft from the last seven days, including a wider Windows 11 25H2 rollout, a big new Windows 11 preview build, Microsoft Store Awards winners, fresh stats, and a lot more.

After enjoying years of relative freedom to do whatever they liked with their Amazon Fire TV Sticks, last month users were informed that apps linked to piracy would be blocked, banned, or even deleted moving forward. With alerts now appearing on users' devices relating to one app in particular, it transpires that bypassing Amazon's restrictions is really easy, at least for now. The bigger question being asked right now is this: what happens when you do?

These are the last features and improvements you'll be getting in 2025.

On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, Microsoft is expected to begin rolling out the final Patch Tuesday update of 2025 for Windows 11, which introduces several significant features, improvements, and bug fixes.

Back in early February 2023, Microsoft started moving towards WinUI on Windows 11 over from DirectUI. For those not familiar, WinUI is the native UI platform component of Windows App SDK (used to build Windows 11 apps), and like WPF, it is also based on XAML.

Thirty years later, JavaScript is the glue that holds the interactive web together, warts and all.

Nvidia has released driver 591.44 WHQL with optimizations and support for Battlefield 6 and improved fidelity of DLSS Ray Reconstruction in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. The latest driver is now the recommended driver for those playing the latest Call of Duty.

It is no secret that Windows 11's UI can still run into problems with the most recent example being that on certain enterprise systems where the entire Shell including Explorer components like Taskbar, Start menu, and more, can fall apart. Thankfully, Microsoft has shared detailed workarounds and IT administrators can apply them on affected systems.

Last month in the second half on November, Neowin noticed that Microsoft had put up a support article describing the broken nature of some of Windows' most important UI and UX components. If you missed the news, the tech giant admitted that Windows 11's Shell elements which include the Explorer, the Start Menu, Taskbar, among others, were bugging out on certain enterprise and office systems.

Microsoft's official documentation has a list of supported processors by Windows 11, which allows users to see what chips can run the operating system without resorting to tweaks and hacks that bypass system requirements. Every now and then, Microsoft updates its docs to add newer chips or remove existing ones (if necessary). The latest update, however, make things a little confusing.

On December 1, 2025, Microsoft released the November 2025 non-security update for Windows 11 versions 24H2 and 25H2 under KB5070311 (build numbers 26200.7309 and 26100.7309). While it is definitely odd to see a November update arriving on December 1, that is not the biggest offender in KB5070311. That title goes to a File Explorer bug that throws a stun grenade at you every time you open a new tab or window.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'Predator: Badlands' tops the chart, followed by 'One Battle After Another'. 'Bugonia' 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.

Microsoft released the optional non-security preview update, also called the C-release, for November 2025 on Windows 11 23H2 last month under KB5070312. And while the month is over, at long last, the company has today rolled out the C-release for Windows 11 versions 25H2 and 24H2 as well. The new cumulative updates are available under KB5070311 and builds 26200.7309 and 26100.7309 for 25H2 and 23H2 respectively.

One of the most useful third-party apps out there which allows bypassing the requirements is Flyoobe and the author of the app released the latest software update for it this week. The update includes a performance boost and it is promising lower memory usage than before. While mentioning this the developer also expresses their disappointment with the overall state of Windows

Microsoft is working to resolve a known issue that prevents some users from opening Excel email attachments in the new Outlook client.

If you have a Samsung SSD on a Windows PC or Mac, you probably know about the Samsung Magician app. This program lets you monitor your drive, customize its features, update firmware, and do more. There is now a big new update available for download under version 9.0, which brings a reworked user interface, widget improvements, and more.

By Susan Bradley

It’s a little rocky.

For the most part, the November updates have gone well, albeit with a few expected hiccups. That includes the first suite of updates that are included with the Windows 10 ESU enrollment. A lowering of the MS-DEFCON level to 4 is warranted. Spend some holiday time this weekend installing updates!

A small but meaningful Microsoft Store upgrade makes removing apps far more convenient.
Windows 11's Microsoft Store will soon make it easier to uninstall apps from your PC. A new feature that is currently being tested among Windows Insiders lets users uninstall Store-managed apps from the Microsoft Store's library page.

PowerToys offers a wide range of tools and utilities that enhance the stock user experience, with recent additions such as Light Switch, a tool for automatic theme switching (something that Microsoft still won't implement on the system level). Now, it looks like Microsoft is working on another tool that should tap into external hardware, particularly your monitor.

Every week we take a close look at the most pirated movies on torrent sites. What are pirates downloading? 'One Battle After Another' tops the chart, followed by 'Frankenstein'. 'Roofman' 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.

See the how the Start Menu has evolved from Windows 95 all the way through to Windows 11 over the course of 40 years.

This week's news recap is here, bringing you the most interesting stories from the world of Microsoft during the last seven days. We have more users roasting Microsoft for stupid ads, questionable performance improvements for File Explorer, new preview builds, and more.