ReportWire

Tag: Microsoft

  • Microsoft Is Warning That Russia and China Are Increasingly Using AI to Mount Cyberattacks on the U.S.

    Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have sharply increased their use of artificial intelligence to deceive people online and mount cyberattacks against the United States, according to new research from Microsoft.

    This July, the company identified more than 200 instances of foreign adversaries using AI to create fake content online, more than double the number from July 2024 and more than ten times the number seen in 2023.

    The findings, published Thursday in Microsoft’s annual digital threats report, show how foreign adversaries are adopting new and innovative tactics in their efforts to weaponize the internet as a tool for espionage and deception.

    AI’s potential said to be exploited by U.S. foes

    America’s adversaries, as well as criminal gangs and hacking companies, have exploited AI’s potential, using it to automate and improve cyberattacks, to spread inflammatory disinformation and to penetrate sensitive systems. AI can translate poorly worded phishing emails into fluent English, for example, as well as generate digital clones of senior government officials.

    Government cyber operations often aim to obtain classified information, undermine supply chains, disrupt critical public services or spread disinformation. Cyber criminals on the other hand work for profit by stealing corporate secrets or using ransomware to extort payments from their victims. These gangs are responsible for the wide majority of cyberattacks in the world and in some cases have built partnerships with countries like Russia.

    Increasingly, these attackers are using AI to target governments, businesses and critical systems like hospitals and transportation networks, according to Amy Hogan-Burney, Microsoft’s vice president for customer security and trust, who oversaw the report. Many U.S. companies and organizations, meanwhile, are getting by with outdated cyber defenses, even as Americans expand their networks with new digital connections.

    Companies, governments, organizations and individuals must take the threat seriously if they are to protect themselves amid escalating digital threats, she said.

    “We see this as a pivotal moment where innovation is going so fast,” Hogan-Burney said. “This is the year when you absolutely must invest in your cybersecurity basics,”

    The U.S. is the top target for cyberattacks, with criminals and foreign adversaries targeting companies, governments and organizations in the U.S. more than any other country. Israel and Ukraine were the second and third most popular targets, showing how military conflicts involving those two nations have spilled over into the digital realm.

    Russia, China and Iran have denied that they use cyber operations for espionage, disruption and disinformation. China, for instance, says the U.S. is trying to “ smear ” Beijing while conducting its own cyberattacks.

    In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Thursday, Iran’s mission to the United Nations said Iran rejects allegations that it is responsible for cyberattacks on the U.S. while reserving the right to defend itself.

    “The Islamic Republic of Iran does not initiate any form of offensive cyber operation against any state,” the mission wrote in the statement. “However, as a victim of cyber operations, it will respond to any such threat in a manner proportionate to its nature and scale.”

    North Korea has pioneered a scheme in which it uses AI personas to create American identities allowing them to apply for remote tech jobs. North Korea’s authoritarian government pockets the salaries, while the hackers use their access to steal secrets or install malware.

    It’s the kind of digital threat that will face more American organizations in the years to come as sophisticated AI programs make it easier for bad actors to deceive, according to Nicole Jiang, CEO of Fable, a San Francisco-based security company that uses AI to sniff out fake employees. AI is not only a tool for hackers, but also a critical defense against digital attackers, Jiang said.

    “Cyber is a cat-and-mouse game,” she said. “Access, data, information, money: That’s what they’re after.”

    Associated Press

    Source link

  • These New AI Features Could Cut Hours of Work From Your Marketing and Presentations

    Fast-growing AI startup Anthropic has released a batch of new features aimed at helping workers be more productive while collaborating with Claude, its popular AI model. With the new features, users will be able to set up automated workflows for Claude to follow, and use Claude to search through Microsoft 365 on their behalf. 

    In a blog post, Anthropic wrote that Claude can now use a feature called skills. These skills operate like a folder that contains instructions for how Claude should perform a specific task and any relevant resources needed to help it do that task. 

    Here’s how it works in practice, according to a video demo posted by Anthropic. Say you need to make marketing materials for a new video game you’re working on. By uploading a .ZIP file containing brand guidelines for your game and text instructions for how Claude should convert those guidelines, you create a skill that Claude can call upon whenever it needs to make documents or art assets in your brand’s style. 

    Skills are also how Claude connects to external apps, such as Google Drive and Microsoft 365. When Claude needs to create a PowerPoint presentation, for example, it calls upon the PowerPoint skill. That skill gives Claude the information and guidance it needs to create working presentations. 

    For customers of Anthropic’s workplace-focused Team and Enterprise plans, administrators can enable company-wide skills. Skills can also be used across Anthropic’s collection of products, including its consumer-facing Claude.ai site and mobile app, Claude Code, and its API. 

    The skills aren’t just useful for marketing and presentations. In addition, Anthropic has announced that users can now directly connect Claude to Microsoft 365. Through this connection, users will be able to ask Claude to search through emails, messages, and dates contained in apps like Outlook, Teams, and Calendar. Claude can also now connect to Microsoft SharePoint and OneDrive, giving it access to your organization’s files. The Microsoft 365 integration is exclusively available on Claude Team and Enterprise plans.  

    Anthropic is also making it easier for enterprises to connect all of their work apps to Claude through a new feature called “enterprise search.” By connecting external apps to Claude, workers can quickly surface information that might otherwise be difficult to find. You could connect your PTO vendor to Claude so your employees can simply ask how much time off they still have this year. 

    According to Anthropic, enterprise search “is particularly valuable for onboarding new team members, answering strategic questions like analyzing patterns in customer feedback, and quickly identifying the right internal experts to consult on any topic.” 

    Ben Sherry

    Source link

  • Microsoft Thinks Gamers Don’t Actually Want to Play Their Games

    Windows 10 is no more (though you may still use the old OS for a bit longer with a free year of security updates). Microsoft’s Copilot AI is growing like a weed on the old operating system’s grave, infecting all of Windows 11 and beyond. While Microsoft is trying to get users talking to AI chatbots on their PCs, the tech giant wants you to do the same while you’re gaming. The end result is a bot that’s so good at stating the obvious it could actually make the gaming experience worse.

    In multiple demos, Microsoft showcased its AI guiding a player in the direction of their objective in Final Fantasy XVI from 2023. “Looks like the quest is right down the stairs, literally right in front of you,” the AI stated in one such demonstration with the obtuse confidence of a child pointing to a toy in a shop window. The player asked, “Hey, how do I get to the blacksmith?” as they looked at their world map and ignored the store icon blaring on the screen.

    In other words: Copilot seems to think gamers are dense dupes who can’t follow instructions and don’t actually want to play their games.

    Gaming Copilot will confidently lie to you (in a British accent)

    The Gaming Copilot Beta is one of the defining features of the ROG Xbox Ally. It’s just not all it’s cracked up to be. © Microsoft

    I tried the Gaming Copilot (still labeled “beta”) on the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X. The AI is built directly into the new Xbox Game Bar as part of the so-called full-screen experience. You can set Copilot to use multiple voice types, though “wise” comes out more lethargic and bored than philosophical, and “heroic” is literally just a British accent. If you hold down the Armoury Crate button (that toggle at the top left of the device), you can bring up options to either speak to or use the on-screen keyboard to type questions at the chatbot.

    In Hades II, I asked Copilot how I could get the “Kudos” resources you can use to upgrade your camp’s aesthetics. It told me I needed to complete more runs to get them. That’s true, and it deserves a single Kudos for knowing the name of the resource, but it also ignored the fact that players can sell loose items to the Wretched Broker to obtain the material.

    Asus ROG Xbox Ally X handheld hands-on
    Gaming Copilot is also accessible through the menu button. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    Discovery is one of those intrinsic features in games that doesn’t exist in any other artistic medium. Sacrificing it for the sake of expedience could effectively ruin some games. It’s the job of game designers to make navigating their worlds feel organic. Players need to feel like they’re making choices without that belittling sense of hand-holding when they are being shepherded toward their goal like the lost sheep they are. A great example of this is in Naughty Dog’s 2017 action-adventure game Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. On one level, players race after a convoy in a truck while being hunted by an armored vehicle with a machine gun. The player can take multiple paths as long as they keep heading downhill. Every player will eventually end up in the same place at the bottom, but the fun is in the creativity.

    Now, imagine if I paused the action for a second to ask an AI, “How do I get to the bottom?” Not only does doing so break the flow of the game, but it also ignores the work the developers put into their design.

    Using Copilot on an acclaimed title like Hades is one thing, but a tool like this applied to poorly designed games also risk becoming something more problematic: a band-aid over legitimate issues. But it also may not even be a great bandage, considering how often it gets things wrong.

    Copilot may offer bad advice to new players

    Gaming Copilot 1 Rog Xbox Ally X
    Holding the start button brings up the Gaming Copilot talking interface. © Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

    As is constantly the case with AI, Gaming Copilot is great at confidently lying to you, and that’s made all the worse when it’s done with an authoritative British accent.

    I asked the Copilot how I could swap or unequip weapons in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and it told me to use an “item wheel” when I hit the bumper button. That’s just incorrect. The game uses the d-pad to swap weapons. Copilot also told me I need to “nudge the thumbstick” to lean around corners, but you actually need to click to the left or right to lean.

    Gaming Copilot also cannot change your settings for you, at least not yet. I had a lengthy conversation with the AI about what I needed to tweak to achieve the best balance of frame rate and graphics quality in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on the Xbox handheld. Its end advice was simply to turn the graphics to medium and move the TDP to its “Turbo” setting. It also suggested I bump the resolution down to 720p, which seemed odd since I could nail around 40 fps at 1080p on the $1,000 handheld. That’s just bad advice.

    On the bright side, this program is still described as a “beta.” There’s a chance it could eventually grow into something useful. Microsoft has already kicked off its beta test of a Copilot Actions app that can complete tasks on the PC on your behalf. If Microsoft wants to make PC gaming as console-like as possible, having an AI that can actually change device settings to enable the best possible performance would be a nice change of pace. That’s what I really want an AI for: Not to do my gaming for me, but to alleviate the tedious parts of getting into a game on PC in the first place. Before it can do that, though, it needs to learn what the d-pad is.

    Kyle Barr

    Source link

  • Microsoft Made the Perfect Feature for Gaming Handhelds—but Good Luck Trying To Install It

    There’s nothing worse than FOMO, the dreaded fear of missing out, to set gamers’ teeth on edge. The $1,000 Asus ROG Xbox Ally X—which launches Oct. 16—sports a new version of Windows all its own. The greedy little handheld PC will be the first in its category to run a version of Microsoft’s OS built customized to make it easier to access games. Oh, and your titles may run better than they did on previous versions of Windows.

    The new version of Windows built for handhelds sports the FSE, a boring initialism for an even duller name, the “full screen experience.” What this does is position all your windows as separate apps you can spool through with a long press of the Xbox Ally’s special Xbox button. It means you no longer have to use a touchscreen in desktop mode to access all your various game launchers. It works well enough at this early stage; I wish it were available to all Windows PCs, akin to Steam’s Big Picture Mode.

    For the moment, however, the feature is limited to the Xbox Ally. In the last few months, we’ve heard different things at different times from both Asus and Microsoft about whether other handhelds could soon receive it. Lenovo has claimed to The Verge that its devices will receive the update in spring of next year. But that’s not what Microsoft is saying. In an email statement, Xbox told Gizmodo, “We’re focused on launching the full-screen experience on the ROG Xbox Ally handhelds for Oct. 16. We have nothing more to share at this time.”

    The Xbox app on the new Windows FSE acts as a hub where you can access your installed games and most (but not all) of your favorite launchers. © Adriano Contreras / Gizmodo

    The FSE is still early in the crib. It’s better to think of it as a beta, even though Asus and Microsoft are keen to launch it exclusively with the Xbox Ally on Thursday. I’m one of multiple reviewers who have experienced glitches where waking the handheld from sleep results in a black screen. The software also eats up battery, even when the device is ostensibly asleep. Asus has confirmed that these are known issues, reassuring me Thursday that fixing the glitch is “definitely high in the priority list.”

    But even before all its kinks are ironed out, the FSE would still make devices like the Legion Go 2 infinitely more accessible. So I fired up a unit and tried to make it happen.

    PC gamers are well used to digging through Windows for hidden or beta features. You can find several guides online detailing the process to install the 25H2 Windows 11 update, though you’ll need to sign up for the Windows Insider beta program. There’s already a detailed guide on Reddit available for those who dare to try. However, you may end up using a third-party program called ViVeTool to manually force the update onto the handheld, which is likely enough of a hindrance to give less-dedicated PC gamers pause. Changing your settings may even break controller-first menu navigation, as IGN detailed in a report last month.

    So rather than force a nonstandard version of the FSE onto the Lenovo Legion Go 2, I tried loading the 24H2 update (KB50657089). No dice—even with that installed, the handheld was displaying the regular Windows desktop with no option to swipe through full-screen apps.

    Interestingly, though, I still saw improved performance. In Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks, I experienced an average of 5 more frames per second after the update than I did when I first reviewed the Legion last month on the stable Windows channel. Shadow of the Tomb Raider performance also improved by an average of 3 fps.

    When I asked Microsoft whether the promised performance uptick was due to the FSE or a general update, the company told me, “While the Windows Update may include general Windows improvements, the Xbox full-screen experience offers the memory and performance improvements, including minimizing background tasks to give more power back to your games.”

    Lenovo Legion Go 2 Review 19
    Windows desktop is still the worst way to navigate a handheld, even on a large display like the Legion Go 2. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo

    In 3DMark benchmark tests on the Legion Go 2, I could nail between 100 and 200 points better in Time Spy and Steel Nomad Light tests. That may not seem like a lot, but 3 or 5 fps may be enough to let you boost graphics settings or make a previously unplayable game playable.

    I then tried porting the same update onto the original ROG Ally X from 2024. I also ended up tied to the traditional desktop on that device. I could, unlike with the Legion, access the new Game Bar with the left menu button. But the performance bump on this model was underwhelming: Though the device is now running a bit better than it was at launch last year, it didn’t display nearly the same boost in performance that the Legion Go 2 did post-update. Long story short, there doesn’t appear to be a clean way for folks who don’t own the Xbox Ally, specifically, to experience the full benefits of the FSE.

    That’s not the biggest problem—yet. The FSE-equipped ROG Xbox Ally X still can’t run all the latest AAA titles at 60 fps on their highest settings. You can net 30 fps in most intense games when you push down the graphics and sacrifice any hope of ray tracing. That said, the frame rate gains here are similar to the delta I’ve seen between the Windows-powered Legion Go S and the Legion Go S with Valve’s Linux-based SteamOS. Which means that if Microsoft finds it in its heart to give more people this update, maybe some gamers won’t feel as strong a desire to hop over to Linux and avoid the slow decline of Windows 11 as a gaming platform. Microsoft still has to fix some bugs first, though.

    Kyle Barr

    Source link

  • BlackRock Joins Nvidia and Microsoft in a $40 Billion Move to Secure Data Centers

    The artificial intelligence sector keeps booming with yet another mega-deal.

    A group including BlackRock, Nvidia and Microsoft is buying Aligned Data Centers in an approximately $40 billion deal in an effort to expand next-generation cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

    The acquisition comes amid a flurry of deals in recent months involving top AI developers that are flooding the booming AI sector with resources and money, and addressing resources — such as electricity and infrastructure — needed to support such technology.

    Last week it was revealed that semiconductor maker AMD will supply its chips to artificial intelligence company OpenAI as part of an agreement to team up on building AI infrastructure. OpenAI will also get the option to buy as much as a 10 percent stake in AMD, according to a joint statement announcing the deal.

    Last month, OpenAI and Nvidia announced a $100 billion partnership that will add at least 10 gigawatts of data center computing power.

    Aligned’s portfolio includes 50 campuses and more than 5 gigawatts of operational and planned capacity, including assets under development, mostly located across the U.S. and in Latin America. Some locations include northern Virginia; Chicago; Dallas; Ohio; Phoenix; Salt Lake City; Sao Paulo, Brazil; Queretaro, Mexico; and Santiago, Chile.

    Aligned, which is privately held, will continue to be led by CEO Andrew Schaap and keep its headquarters in Dallas.

    One of the sellers, Macquarie Asset Management, initially invested in Aligned in 2018. Ben Way, head of Macquarie Asset Management, said in a statement, “The scaling of Aligned Data Centers from two locations to 50 in seven years is representative of our approach to working with great companies and teams to support their rapid growth and deliver positive impact.”

    The transaction is the first deal for the investment consortium, which is named the Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Partnership. The consortium has an initial target of mobilizing and deploying $30 billion of equity capital, with the potential of reaching $100 billion including debt.

    “AIP is positioned to meet the growing demand for the infrastructure required as AI continues to reshape the global economy,” BlackRock Chairman and CEO and AIP Chairman Larry Fink said in a statement. “This partnership is bringing together leading companies and mobilizing private capital to accelerate AI innovation and drive global economic growth and productivity.”

    The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2026.

    Shares of Nvidia rose about 1 percent in morning trading.

    Associated Press

    Source link

  • Xbox’s First Handhelds Are Powerful, But Break the Bank More Than the Mold

    However, because the X-ROGs are fundamentally regular PCs, they’re a lot more versatile than Nintendo or Valve’s efforts. Not only can you play media, web browse, or do anything else you might do on a PC (even Office tasks, if you hate joy), but you can install any other PC gaming client—Steam, Epic, GOG, and more are all available. Better still, the Xbox app aggregates all games installed on the system into one library view, regardless of where they originate. You can even turn your Xbox ROG into an ersatz Steam Deck by running Steam in Big Picture mode (although some of its controller keybindings may not work).

    The big win—pardon the pun—is that you can install mods with ease. While I’ve gotten a few mods running on my Steam Deck over the years, its Linux underbelly makes things trickier. On the X-ROGs, I’ve been able to use mods as easily as on my main gaming desktop, with no second guessing if they’ll actually work. It’s a great feature that’s facilitated by having standard Windows as the base.

    Soft Where?

    But wait, there’s a third UI player in the mix: Asus’ own Armoury Crate SE software. Broadly, this is more of a device manager, with a dedicated button on both consoles to bring up a Command Center quick menu. This allows you to instantly switch power profiles, create custom control inputs, or set frame rate limits. It also offers a real-time monitor displaying useful system information like temperature, CPU and GPU performance, battery level and power drain, and the current frame rate.

    However, fully open Armoury Crate and you’ll find an array of far deeper controls, from granular system settings to tweaking color profiles of the LED rings that sit under each thumbstick. It also has its own Update Center—yet another to check—and its own unified library, distinct from the Xbox app’s. After a week with the X-ROGs, I’m finally familiar with where functions live, but the learning curve is steep, and having essentially three central interfaces—Xbox, Windows, Armoury Crate—for a single device is ridiculous.

    Matt Kamen

    Source link

  • The Morning After: It’s the end for Windows 10

    After more than a decade of service, Microsoft is declaring the end of Windows 10’s usable life. If your machine still uses it, rest assured it’ll continue to work, but you won’t see any more software and security updates. If your machine is compatible, you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 11 for free, or this can provide the justification you need to buy a new machine.

    But there’s also a way to keep your status quo without the additional stress, at least for the next year. It’s possible to sign up to Microsoft’s Extended Security updates program, giving you an extra year of software and security patches. It won’t cost you any money, but you will be expected to sign up to Microsoft’s cloud services.

    If you’d like to keep Windows 10 running and safe, you can head over to our comprehensive guide on what to do. And, if you’re ready to upgrade, check out our guide on the best Windows laptops to choose your next purchase.

    — Dan Cooper

    Get Engadget’s newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here!

    The news you might have missed

    It’s comically evil, really.

    The FCC has outlined a plan to once again allow ISPs to charge hidden fees, making it easier to rip off consumers. It follows a complaint from those poor carriers that believe it’s far too hard to be required to tell customers what it is they’re charging for. I bet that’s loads of fun for all of the FCC employees who went into public service in the hope of actually serving the public.

    Continue Reading.

    I’m in the minority, but I think that’s a good shout.

    Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

    Apple is dropping the + from the name of its TV subscription service. That’s a smart piece of branding, since everyone just calls it Apple TV anyway. But it does muddy the waters, given Apple’s set top box is also called Apple TV. But, as someone who reviews Apple TV shows and irritates editors by forgetting the plus sign, this will make my (and their) lives a lot easier.

    Continue Reading.

    The rumor mill suggests we’ll see them in a few days.

    Promotional Image from Apple

    Apple is reportedly gearing up to announce a series of updated devices, each one packing its new A5 chip. Bloomberg claims the company will announce new MacBook Pros, Pad Pros and an updated Vision Pro online over a period of days. If so, it would be mirroring the release pattern from last year, when an updated product was launched online each day across a week. Rumors suggest we’ll only get the vanilla A5 versions this fall, with the higher-end versions of the silicon not arriving until the start of next year.

    Continue Reading.

    Clone Home was a successor to Going Mobile.

    Screenshot from the unreleased game Ratchet and Clank: Clone Home

    Ratchet & Clank superfans have unearthed a fairly substantial gem after a years-long search: a finished but essentially unreleased mobile title from 2006. Clone Home was the sequel to Going Mobile developed for mobile phones running Java from those halcyon pre-iPhone days. It was axed shortly before launch, but a few copies did find their way into the ether, which enabled YouTuber The Golden Bolt to show it off to the world.

    Continue Reading.

    Daniel Cooper

    Source link

  • Microsoft debuts its first in-house AI image generator

    Microsoft is continuing to roll out in-house AI models, further decreasing its reliance on long-standing partnership with OpenAI. Today, the company introduced MAI-Image-1, its first internally-developed image-generating AI model. According to the blog post, MAI-Image-1 is particularly good for creating photorealistic results, and can generate natural lighting and landscapes. For now, the model is being tested on LMArena, and Microsoft said it plans to roll out MAI-Image-1 to Copilot and its Bing Image Creator “very soon.” 

    Over the summer, Microsoft made its first break from collaborating with OpenAI when it unveiled its first two in-house trained models, MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview. At that time, Microsoft AI division leader Mustafa Suleyman said in an interview that the company had “an enormous five-year roadmap that we’re investing in quarter after quarter.” So far, it’s at least setting a solid clip of releases.

    Source link

  • Is the AI Conveyor Belt of Capital About to Stop?

    The American economy is little more than a big bet on AI. Morgan Stanley investor Ruchir Sharma recently noted that money poured into AI investments now accounts for about 40% of the United States’ GDP growth in 2025, and AI companies are responsible for 80% of growth in American stocks. So how bad is it that the most recent major deal among AI giants, agreements that have driven up stock prices dramatically, look like a snake eating its own tail?

    In recent months, Nvidia announced that it would invest $100 billion into OpenAI, OpenAI announced that it would pay $300 billion to Oracle for computing power, and Oracle announced it would buy $40 billion worth of chips from Nvidia. It doesn’t take a flow chart to get the feeling that these firms are just moving money around between each other. But surely that’s not happening…right?

    It’s a little harder to get assurances of that than you might think. 

    Artur Widak/Anadolu via Getty Images

    Is it all round-tripping?

    Many of these agreements are, on their face, mutually beneficial. If everything is on the level, while these deals might be circular, they should be moving everything forward. Rishi Jaluria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, told Gizmodo that deals like these could result in a “less capacity-constrained world,” which would allow for faster development of models that could produce higher returns on investment.

    “The better models we have, the more we can realize a lot of these AI use cases that are on hold just because the technology isn’t powerful enough yet to handle it,” he said. “If that happens, and that can generate real [return on investment] for customers … that results in real cost savings, potentially new revenue generation opportunities, and that creates net benefits from a GDP perspective.”

    So as long as we keep having AI breakthroughs and these companies figure out how to monetize their products, everything should be fine. On the off chance that doesn’t happen, though? 

    “If that doesn’t happen, if there is no real enterprise AI adoption, then it’s all round-tripping,” Jaluria said.

    Round-tripping, generally speaking, refers to the unethical and typically illegal practice of making trades or transactions to artificially prop up a particular asset or company, making it look like it’s more valuable and in demand than it actually is. In this case, it would be tech companies that are trying to make it appear like they are more valuable than they actually are by announcing big deals with each other that move the stock price. 

    So what might suggest whether this money is actually accomplishing anything other than serving as hot air in a rapidly inflating bubble? Jaluria said he’s watching for faster developments of models, advancements in performance, and overall AI adoption. “If this leads to a step function change in the way enterprise is adopting and utilizing AI, that creates a benefit,” he said.

    Whether that is happening currently or not is kind of in the eye of the beholder. OpenAI has certainly shown advancements in its technology. The release of its Sora 2 video generation model has unleashed a fresh hell upon the world, used to generate significant amounts of copyright violations and misinformation. But the latest version of the company’s flagship model, GPT-5, underwhelmed and failed to live up to expectations when it was released in August. 

    Adoption rates of the technology are also a bit of a Rorschach test. The company boasts that 10% of the world is using ChatGPT, and nearly 80% of the business world says that it’s looking into how to utilize the technology. But the early adopters aren’t finding much utility. According to a survey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 95% of companies that have tried to integrate generative AI tools into their operations have produced zero return on investment.

    Where these investments are generating a return is in the stock market. Which, frankly, does not quell concerns about these firms simply boosting one another’s bottom line.

    Take Oracle, for example. Last month, the cloud provider had a rough quarter by all traditional indicators. It missed on both its revenue and earnings projections, and its net income was flat year-over-year. And yet, the stock price soared. The reason: the company’s plump list of remaining performance obligations—financial agreements that will provide revenue that have not yet been fulfilled. There, the company showed a massive amount of growth, a 359% increase from the year prior, with a projected $455 billion coming in. 

    That money is not real yet. Nor is the growth the company has promised, claiming that its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure revenue would grow from under $20 billion to nearly $150 billion before the start of the 2030s. But all of it was sufficient for investors to drive up Oracle’s share price enough to slingshot CEO Larry Ellison into the top spot on the world’s richest person list, briefly leapfrogging Elon Musk. 

    A video of Sam Altman generated by OpenAI's Sora 2
    Still from a promotion video of Sam Altman generated by OpenAI’s Sora 2. © OpenAI

    OpenAI is either the nexus point or the void at the center

    Most of this promised revenue will come from OpenAI, which made a commitment to purchase $300 billion worth of computing power from the company over five years. The clock on that contract doesn’t start until 2027, but assuming it actually happens, it would be one of the largest cloud computing deals in history.

    It’s also one of the most unlikely, just based on where the companies involved currently stand. In order to provide the compute that it has promised to OpenAI, Oracle will reportedly need to generate 4.5 gigawatts of power capacity, more than two Hoover Dams’ worth of power. On the other side of the deal, OpenAI will have to pay about $60 billion per year to fit the bill for the agreement. It currently generates about $10 billion in revenue, which, statistically speaking, is less than $60 billion.

    You can see a similar circular shape to OpenAI’s recent deal with Nvidia rival AMD, too. The exact details of the agreement weren’t reported, but chipmaker AMD expects to generate tens of billions of dollars over the next half-decade as it sells its AI chips to OpenAI. As part of the agreement, OpenAI gets a swath of shares in AMD, with options to buy up to 10% of the company. Lucky for OpenAI, there’s really no better time to get your hands on some AMD shares than right before it announces a big AI-related deal. The company’s stock price surged by about 35% following the announcement. 

    With those two most recent deals on the books, OpenAI has agreed to more than $1 trillion worth of computing deals so far this year. That’s a lot for any company to spend, but it’s especially a lot for a still-private company that reports just $10 billion in projected revenue through 2025. Even by its most recent funding rounds, the company as a whole is currently valued at about $500 billion.

    Most of those deals have contingencies attached. For instance, Nvidia’s investment in OpenAI isn’t actually $100 billion, but an initial $10 billion for one gigawatt of data center capacity with the potential for $100 billion if 10 gigawatts are ultimately achieved. But the stock prices and valuations certainly seem to treat these deals as if they are set in stone. And OpenAI seems to be operating that way, too. The company claims that it’ll more than 10x its revenue in the next few years, and projects it’ll hit $129 billion annually by 2029.

    Conveyor belts of capital

    That type of potentially inflated revenue figure is the kind of thing that makes some people think of the Dot Com bubble of the early 2000s, where we saw companies like Commerce One receive a $21 billion valuation despite barely having any revenue. But Peter Atwater, Adjunct Professor of Economics at William and Mary and President of consulting firm Financial Insyghts, sees a different reflection in the AI bubble: the housing market collapse. 

    “What we saw at the top of the mortgage market was all of these conveyor belts of capital, money flowing from one party to another party to another party. And what you started to see was that there were multiple points of relationship so that any participant in the system was then dependent on every other conveyor belt in the system working simultaneously to keep the system going,” he told Gizmodo. “In many ways, we’re seeing the same developing web of capital flows across the AI space.”

    This creates some obvious problems. The circular deals that, in theory, are wheels moving the whole thing forward all have to keep turning. If any of them stop, the whole thing stops, because they are all so interconnected that no failure is truly isolated. 

    Atwater said that the types of major, metric-contingent deals that have been dominating headlines in the AI space aren’t all that different from some of what was happening in the mortgage industry back in 2007, where some of the financial commitments required mortgages to meet certain conditions.

    “In the frenzy of a bubble, everyone overcommits. The purpose of overcommitting is to stake a claim in what you believe will be an intensely scarce commodity in the future. So you have buyers overcommit and you have sellers agreeing to overprovide as a result,” he explained. “What we find over and over is that commitments are among the first obligations to be cut off once conditions change, once confidence begins to fall.”

    Right now, there’s a stomach for those commitments. That isn’t guaranteed to be there in the future if all of these promised returns on investment don’t materialize. Atwater said that the market requires credit markets being willing to continue to extend massive sums of money to cover the agreements made, equity markets that value these transactions at “an extraordinary multiple,” and suppliers capable of delivering the promised products. There’s no guarantee that all of those factors will hold. 

    The math is already pretty tricky. As tech commentator Ed Zitron has pointed out, major firms like Microsoft, Meta, Tesla, Amazon, and Google have invested about $560 billion in AI infrastructure over the last two years. They’ve brought in a combined $35 billion in AI-related revenue. OpenAI’s commitments are even bigger, with returns that are arguably even smaller. 

    The company’s development and expansion of its services will rely in no small part on massive data center projects, which will require the same amount of energy to operate as New York City and San Diego combined—energy that currently isn’t even available. And, once again, there is no guarantee that the end product, once all of that energy is spent and data centers are built, will actually generate revenue.

    “Ultimately, if you do not have a consumer for the product, there will be no AI space because these companies can’t continue to do this for nothing. Listening to a lot of the calls in the last couple of weeks, there’s a clear open question as to how these companies are going to make money at this,” Atwater said.

    For the moment, everyone is seeing green, and hope springs eternal. As long as that is the case, no one will ask where the revenue is coming from. “Right now, the AI sector is operating in a forever mindset. They are acting as if they have a very long period of time under which they can figure this out and make money,” Atwater said. “As long as confidence is high, this entire ecosystem can offer fantasy. When confidence falls, they’re going to be expected to deliver real-term performance in a very short time frame.”

    Unfortunately, should that happen, it won’t just be these companies that bear the brunt of the failure. “You have to look at this as a larger ecosystem. To talk about AI today, it means we have to talk about the credit market, we have to talk about the credit market. Wall Street and AI are a single beast,” Atwater said, warning that a very small number of firms currently have a major grasp on the whole of the American economy. 

    Lots of investors are piling into the AI space, fearful of missing out on a market that seems like it can only go up. But few of them are looking at why those valuations and stock prices keep climbing, showing little curiosity as to what might happen if all of this money is just getting shifted around, artificially inflating the actual value of the companies they are betting on. 

    “‘Why?’,” Atwater said, “is the last question asked in a bull market.”

    AJ Dellinger

    Source link

  • Time’s Up on Windows 10. Upgrade to Windows 11 With One of These Laptops

    You’ll want to read our extensive guide on How to Choose the Right Laptop, but for the basics, you’ll want to decide what category of laptop you need. Most people should buy a 13-inch or 14-inch laptop, and spending around $750-$1,000 is a good place to start. You should expect a laptop around this price to get good battery life, have a decent screen, perform well enough for basic tasks, and have a comfortable keyboard and touchpad. You should also expect at least 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Anything more than that gets into premium territory where you’re paying for higher specs, more performance, or extra features. If you want something with a discrete GPU for either gaming or creative workflows, you’ll need to spend more than this.

    A laptop like the Dell 14 Plus is the ideal example of what you can get while shopping in this price range. You can even find laptops with OLED panels, up to one terabyte of storage, depending on how good discounts happen to be. I would consider anything under $750 to be a cheap laptop, and will therefore come with some significant compromises, especially around the quality of the panel and the touchpad. Fortunately, laptops that use the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip get great battery life, despite often falling under $750 in price.

    Here’s a list of important specs to consider:

    CPU: For thin and light laptops, I would recommend one of the Snapdragon X, X Plus, or X Elite chips. They get the best battery life and performance for their class of laptop. As an alternative, the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V is also quite good.

    GPU: As of now, the Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, such as the Core Ultra 7 258V, have the best integrated graphics. For discrete options, you’ll want to pick something with one of the latest Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs, such as the RTX 5060. The biggest leap in performance there is between the RTX 5070 and the RTX 5070 Ti, which increases VRAM to 12 GB.

    RAM (or memory): Stick with at least 16 GB if you can. Since the advent of the Copilot+ designation, it ha become the new standard. You’ll even find laptops as cheap as $600 that have 16 GB of memory. Gamers and content creators should upgrade to 32 GB if possible.

    Storage: Similar to memory, many laptops have moved to 512 GB as the new standard, and you’ll find lots of affordable laptops with 512 GB as the base configuration. Upgrading to one or two terabytes, where possible, will make your life that much easier, especially since many laptops don’t offer expandable storage.

    Display: Laptops are usually categorized by screen size, with 13-inch, 14-inch, and 16-inch being the most common. You’ll want to consider size, resolution, refresh rate, and panel type here.

    Portability: Outside of display size, thickness of the chassis and weight are the primary factors here, determining how portable a laptop is to travel with. Other dimensions are important too, but more often than not, that is determined by the screen size.

    Ports: Many laptops are limited to just USB-C and headphone jack these days, with some exceptions where USB-A or HDMI are included. Make sure your laptop has what you need, or else you’ll need a USB Hub or laptop docking station to get more ports or to increase external display support.

    Luke Larsen

    Source link

  • Should You Cancel Xbox Game Pass? Everything to Know on the Price Hikes and New Features

    Like it or loathe it, we live in a subscription economy. Music, movies, meal boxes, and more are no longer things you buy once. They’re a constant draw on your wallet. Gaming is no exception, and while every major player in the sector has some form of sub for players—from PlayStation Plus and Nintendo Switch Online for consoles to Apple Arcade on phones—none of them offered quite as much for a modest monthly fee as Xbox Game Pass.

    Depending on the subscription tier, the service gave players access to a significant library of titles and was available on Xbox consoles, PC, or via cloud gaming. While most of its competitors focused on back-catalog titles for their gaming subscriptions, Game Pass stood apart by including major first-party titles on their day of release for subscribers to its Ultimate tier.

    Microsoft long claimed it was “the best deal in gaming,” and with new releases costing upwards of $70 per title versus a $19.99 monthly price tag on Game Pass Ultimate, it was hard to argue. Recent changes to the service, however—including some hefty price rises—have upset users in a big way, sending so many people rushing to cancel their subscriptions that the membership site crashed.

    What’s Happened?

    On October 1, Microsoft revamped the entire structure of Game Pass. Previously, and following an earlier rejig in September 2024, players had essentially four options—Game Pass for PC, Game Pass Core, Game Pass Standard, and Game Pass Ultimate. Going forward, Core is replaced with Essential, and Standard is replaced with Premium, while Ultimate retains its name. All tiers are now accessible on PC, although a dedicated PC-only plan remains available.

    It’s not the rebrand that’s had people canceling, though—it’s the hefty price hikes that have come with the upper tiers. While Essential keeps the almost totemic $9.99-per-month pricing of Core, Premium jumps to $14.99 from Standard’s $11.99 (a 25 percent increase), and the PC-only offering goes from $11.99 to $16.49 (a 38 percent increase). It’s Game Pass Ultimate that’s proven the most contentious, leaping from $19.99 to $29.99. Price increases on subscription services routinely boil the frog and creep up in price slowly—just look at what you used to pay for Netflix—but a massive 50 percent spike overnight, the equivalent of $120 more a year, has caught many off guard.

    It doesn’t help that it follows two price hikes on Xbox consoles themselves in the span of less than a year, at least in the US. In May 2025, the 512-GB Xbox Series S went from $299.99 to $379.99, the 1-TB Xbox Series X from $499.99 to $599.99, and the 2-TB Series X from $599.99 to $729.99. These prices rose globally, with prices reflected in each territory. But then, in September, prices rose again for buyers in America, taking those same models to $399.99, $649.99, and $799.99, respectively. Microsoft cited the increases being “due to changes in the macroeconomic environment”—read: tariffs—but the combined effect on pricing across the whole Xbox ecosystem really challenges that “best deal in gaming” idea.

    Matt Kamen

    Source link

  • The Destruction in Gaza Is What the Future of AI Warfare Looks Like

    In 2021, Israel used “the Gospel” for the first time. That was the codename for an AI tool deployed in the 11-day war against Gaza that the IDF has since deemed the first artificial intelligence war. The conclusion of that war didn’t end the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but it was a sign of things to come.

    The Gospel rapidly spews out a mounting list of potential buildings to target in military strikes by reviewing data from surveillance, satellite imagery, and social networks. That was four years ago, and the field of artificial intelligence has since experienced one of the most rapid periods of advancement in the history of technology.

    Marking two years on Tuesday, Israel’s latest offensive on Gaza has been called an “AI Human Laboratory” where the weapons of the future are tested on live subjects.

    Over the last two years, the conflict has claimed the lives of more than 67,000 Palestinians, upwards of 20,000 of whom were children. As of March 2025, more than 1,200 families were completely wiped out, according to a Reuters examination. Since October 2024, the number of casualties provided by the Palestinian Ministry of Health has only included identified bodies, so the real death toll is likely even higher.

    Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to a genocide, a UN Commission concluded last month.

    Hamas and Israel agreed to the first phase of a ceasefire deal that was announced on Wednesday, but Israeli strikes on Gaza were still continuing as of Thursday morning, according to Reuters. The agreed-upon plan involves the release of Israeli hostages by Hamas in exchange for 1,950 Palestinians taken by Israel and the long-awaited aid convoys. But it does not involve the creation of a Palestinian state, which Israel strictly opposes. On Friday afternoon, Israel said that the ceasefire agreement is now in effect, and President Trump has said there will be a hostage release next week. There have been at least three ceasefire agreements since October 7, 2023.

    Aiding Israel’s destruction in Gaza is an unprecedented reliance on artificial intelligence that is, at least partially, supplied by American tech giants. Israel’s use of AI in surveillance and wartime decisions has been documented and criticized time and again by various media and advocacy organizations over the years.

    “AI systems, and generative AI models in particular, are notoriously flawed with high error rates for any application that requires precision, accuracy, and safety-criticality,” Dr. Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, told Gizmodo. “AI outputs are not facts; they’re predictions. The stakes are higher in the case of military activity, as you’re now dealing with lethal targeting that impacts the life and death of individuals.”

    AI that generates kill lists

    Although Israel has not disclosed its intelligence software fully and denied some of the AI usage claims, numerous media and non-profit investigations paint a different picture.

    Also used in Israel’s 2021 campaign were two other programs called “Alchemist,” which sends real-time alerts for “suspicious movement,” and “Depth of Wisdom” to map out Gaza’s tunnel network. Both are reportedly in use this time around, as well.

    On top of the three programs Israel has previously openly owned up to using, the IDF also utilizes Lavender, an AI system that essentially generates a kill list of Palestinians. The AI calculates a percentage score for how likely a Palestinian is to be a member of a militant group. If the score is high, the person becomes the target of missile attacks.

    According to a report from Israeli magazine +972, the army “almost completely relied” on the system at least in the early weeks of the war, with full knowledge of the fact that it misidentified civilians as terrorists.

    The IDF required officers to approve any of the recommendations made by the AI systems, but according to +972, that approval process just checked whether or not the target was male.

    Many other AI systems that are in use by the IDF are still in the shadows. One of the few programs also unveiled is “Where’s Daddy?” which was built to strike targets inside their family homes, according to +972.

    “The IDF bombed [Hamas operatives] in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations,” an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer told +972.

    AI in surveillance

    The Israeli army also uses AI in its mass surveillance efforts. Yossi Sariel, who led the IDF’s surveillance unit until late last year when he resigned, citing failure to prevent the Oct 7. Hamas attack, spent a sabbatical year training at a Pentagon-funded defense institution in Washington, D.C., where he shared radical visions of AI on the battlefield, according to a professor at the institute who spoke to the Washington Post last year.

    A Guardian report from August found that Israel was storing and processing mobile phone calls made by Palestinians via Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform. After months of protests, Microsoft announced last month that it is cutting off access to some of its services provided to an IDF unit after an internal review found evidence that supported some of the claims in the Guardian article.

    Microsoft denies prior knowledge, but the Guardian report paints a different picture. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with IDF’s spying operations head Sariel in late 2021 to discuss hosting intelligence material on the Microsoft cloud, the Guardian reported.

    “The vast majority of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli military remains intact,” Hossam Nasr, an organizer with No Azure for Apartheid and a former Microsoft worker, told Gizmodo last month.

    When asked for comment, Microsoft directed Gizmodo to a previous statement the tech giant made on the ongoing internal investigation into how its products are used by Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

    On top of storing and combing through data, AI was used in translating and transcribing the gathered surveillance. But an internal Israeli audit, according to the Washington Post, found that some of the AI models that the IDF used to translate communications from Arabic had inaccuracies.

    An Associated Press investigation from earlier this year found that advanced AI models by OpenAI, purchased via Microsoft’s Azure, were used to transcribe and translate the intercepted communications. The investigation also found that the Israeli military’s use of OpenAI and Microsoft technology skyrocketed after Oct 7, 2023.

    AI-driven surveillance efforts don’t just target residents of Gaza and the West Bank, but they have also been used against pro-Palestinian protestors in the United States. An Amnesty International report from August found that AI products by American companies like Palantir were used by the Department of Homeland Security to target non-citizens who speak out for Palestinian rights.

    “Palantir has had federal contracts with DHS for fourteen years. DHS’s current engagement with Palantir is through Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where the company provides solutions for investigative case management and enforcement operations,” a DHS spokesperson told Gizmodo. “At the Department level, DHS looks holistically at technology and data solutions that can meet operational and mission demands.”

    Palantir has not yet responded to a request for comment.

    AI-driven accusations

    The proliferation of AI-generated video and images has done more than just flood the internet with slop. It has also caused widespread confusion for social media users over just what’s real and what’s fake. The confusion is understandable, but it has been co-opted to discredit the voices of the oppressed. In this case, too, Gazans have been at the receiving end of the attacks.

    The videos and photos coming out of Gaza are referred to in Israel as “Gazawood”, with many claiming that the images are staged or completely AI-generated. Since Israel has not allowed foreign journalists into Gaza and not only discredits but also disproportionately targets the enclave’s journalists in air strikes, the truth becomes harder to validate.

    In one instance, Saeed Ismail, a real 22-year-old Gazan who had been raising money online to feed his family, was accused of being AI-generated due to misspelled words on his blanket featured in one video. Gizmodo verified his existence in July.

    American big tech is leading the way

    While Israeli tech startups find a sizable market in the U.S. and deals with government agencies like ICE, the relationship goes both ways.

    It’s tough to precisely map out which American companies have fed the technology used to target and kill Palestinians. But what is available is which Big Tech companies proudly partner with the Israeli army. And the answer to that question is almost all of them.

    Microsoft has received much of the recent attention from activists, but Google, Amazon, and Palantir are considered some of the other top American third-party vendors for the IDF.

    Google and Amazon employees have been protesting for years over “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 that tasks the American tech giants with providing cloud computing and AI services to the Israeli military.

    Amazon suspended an engineer last month for emailing the CEO, Andy Jassy, about the project and speaking out against it in company Slack channels.

    Although Google has also clamped down on employee criticism, when the deal was signed in 2021, Google officials themselves raised concerns that the cloud services could be used for human rights violations against Palestinians, according to a 2024 New York Times report.

    The Israeli military also requested access to Google’s Gemini as recently as last November, according to a Washington Post report.

    Palantir, which offers software like the Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) that analyzes enemy targets and proposes battle plans, agreed to a strategic partnership with the IDF to supply its technology to “the current situation in Israel,” Palantir executive vice president Josh Harris told Bloomberg last year.

    Palantir has been under fire globally for its partnership with the Israeli army. Late last year, a major Norwegian investor sold all of its Palantir holdings due to concerns of international human rights law violations. The investing company said that an analysis indicated that Palantir aided an AI-based IDF system that ranked Palestinians based on the likelihood to launch “lone wolf terrorist” attacks, which then led to preemptive arrests.

    CEO Alex Karp has stood behind the company’s decision to back Israel in its war against Gazans many times.

    The IDF has also inked data center deals with Cisco and Dell, and a cloud computing deal with independent IBM subsidiary Red Hat.

    “IBM holds human rights and freedoms in the highest regard, and we are deeply committed to conducting our business with integrity, guided by our robust ethical standards,” IBM told Gizmodo. “As for the UN report, most of its claims are inaccurate and should not be treated as fact.”

    Cisco, Dell, Google, Amazon, and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

    In August, the Washington Post unveiled a 38-page alleged plan for Gaza to become a U.S.-operated tech hub.

    Called the Gaza, Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration and Transformation Trust (or GREAT), the plan involves “temporarily relocating” the remaining two million or so Palestinians to build six to eight AI-powered smart cities, regional data centers to serve Israel, and something called “The Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone.” The plan would convert Gaza into a “trusteeship” administered by the U.S. for at least 10 years.

    Future of AI warfare and surveillance

    AI companies want in on the battlefield.

    There is a huge demand by militaries around the globe for the AI systems provided by tech giants. America is pouring out millions of dollars to integrate AI systems into military decision-making, like identifying strike targets as part of its Thunderforge program. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has also reportedly made military artificial intelligence a top strategic priority.

    As the technology is still in its growing phase, the active war zones and the civilians living there become test subjects for AI-powered killing machines. Similar to Gaza, Ukraine has also been described as a real-time testing ground for AI-powered military technology. In that case, though, the Ukrainian government themselves are also on board with it.

    Over the summer, the Ukrainian military announced “Test in Ukraine,” a scheme that invites foreign arms companies to test out their latest weapons on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine war.

    On top of its abundant deals with the Israeli army, Palantir is also very popular with the American Department of Defense. The company inked a $10 billion software and data contract with the U.S. Army in August.

    One could argue that profit will always override every other incentive, but even Palantir drew a line recently when asked to participate in a controversial UK digital identification program, arguing that the program needed to be “decided at the ballot box,” according to the Times.

    We’ve seen tech companies back away from military projects, like Project Maven, in the past when they felt the cultural winds blowing against them. For now, the Trump administration wants Americans leading the way on the AI battlefield. While external criticism and internal pressure from employees still exist at the biggest AI firms, they currently have a plausible argument that this is what the American people voted for. Until that changes, the gold rush for military funds will persist.

    Rhett Jones

    Source link

  • Windows 10 support ends October 14, but here’s how to get an extra year for free

    You’ve known it for a while: Microsoft has determined that it’s moving Windows 10 to “end of life” status starting on October 14. That means while Windows 10 PCs will continue to work after that date, they’ll stop getting important security updates by default. That leaves you with three choices if you want to make sure your computer remains secure:

    1. You can choose to upgrade to Windows 11 for free if your computer is compatible.

    2. You can buy a new PC that already has Windows 11 pre-installed (or opt for an alternative, like a Mac or a Chromebook).

    3. Forget about Windows 11 right now and sign up for the Extended Security Updates (ESU), which lets you kick the can down the road for a year.

    Since the last one is easy — and can now be done for free in many cases — that’s what we’re focusing on here. We’ll walk you through the steps of keeping Windows 10 on your PC… for now, at least.

    How to sign up for Windows 10 Extended Security Updates on your computer

    We can question Microsoft’s motives for killing off Windows 10, even though it works perfectly well on most older PCs. But without those periodic security updates, your PC will become increasingly susceptible to malware with each passing week. To that end, enrolling in Extended Security Updates (ESU) will give you another year of using Windows 10 securely.

    At one point, Microsoft suggested the 12-month extension would require a $30 fee. While that’s still an option, there’s now a free path for Windows 10 users in the US. Here’s how to make it happen.

    Step 1: Make sure your PC is up to date

    You can find out if your computer is up-to-date by going into your Settings > System > About, then scroll down to see what version you’re running. If not, you’ll want to make sure you also install all the Windows 10 updates available.

    Step 2: Make sure you’re using an administrator account

    If you share a computer with multiple people in your household, make sure you’re signed in to the administrator account. Typically, it’s the first account created on the computer. You’ll know it’s the right one when you see “Administrator” under the name. (You can double-check under Settings > Your Info.)

    Step 3: Verify if your PC is eligible to upgrade to Windows 11 (or not)

    If you see an option to upgrade to Windows 11, just do that. It’s free and it keeps you in the Windows loop. Otherwise, continue following the steps below so you can keep your computer safe with security updates.

    Step 4: Enroll in Extended Security Updates

    Sign up for ESU by selecting Update & Security from the Settings menu. Click the “Enroll Now” sign-up link, as pictured below. Again, you may see an option to download Windows 11 if your computer meets the requirements (again, definitely do that if you see it).

    Find out if you need to update your computer. (Screenshot/Engadget)

    If you’re not seeing the “Enroll now” link, you probably need to update and install the latest Windows 10 updates (as noted above).

    By enrolling in Extended Security Updates, you'll have another year before you need to upgrade to Windows 11. (Screenshots/Engadget)

    By enrolling in Extended Security Updates, you’ll have another year before you need to upgrade to Windows 11. (Screenshots/Engadget)

    Step 5: Choose your upgrade method

    Next up is choosing how you want to enroll, and you have a few options. The easiest way is to back up your PC settings. It’s free, but it takes a little bit of time since you’ll need to back up your data. Again, you’ll need to be using your administrator account to get started.

    Back up your PC before you enroll in ESU. (ExplainingComputers via YouTube)

    Back up your PC before you enroll in ESU. (ExplainingComputers via YouTube)

    That said, the free option here comes with two catches, at least for users in the US. (European users will get the free option with no strings attached.) The first is that you’ll be linking your Windows login to Microsoft’s cloud-based online service. Most users have likely already done this (if they’re using CoPilot, Office 365, GamePass, OneDrive or one of Microsoft’s other various online services). But if you’ve specifically opted for a local login to Windows, the price you’re paying for this “free” extension is joining the cloud-connected Microsoft universe.

    The other potential issue is that the free backup only applies to the first 5 GB of storage. Anything more, and you’ll need to pay up for Microsoft’s OneDrive services. But thankfully, you can turn off anything you don’t want to back up by going to Settings > OneDrive and toggling off options like Documents, Pictures and Videos to get in under the free threshold to start.

    Once you’re signed in, a window will pop up that says “Add this device to receive Extended Security Updates.” Click Add Device to enroll it. Click Done.

    That’s it, you’re done! (Until next year)

    You’ve got 12 more months to figure out an alternative upgrade path to Windows 11. If anything changes next year, we’ll update this story with what your next steps are.

    This confirms you've enrolled in ESU through October next year. (Screenshot/Engadget)

    You did it right if you see this window. (Screenshot/Engadget)

    Katie Teague

    Source link

  • Microsoft Corporation $MSFT Shares Acquired by Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG

    Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG grew its position in Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 3.8% during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 922,524 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 33,382 shares during the quarter. Microsoft comprises 9.8% of Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG’s holdings, making the stock its largest position. Bank Pictet & Cie Europe AG’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $457,119,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

    A number of other hedge funds also recently bought and sold shares of MSFT. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC raised its holdings in Microsoft by 564,387.1% in the 2nd quarter. Kingstone Capital Partners Texas LLC now owns 90,549,369 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $45,040,162,000 after acquiring an additional 90,533,328 shares during the last quarter. Nuveen LLC acquired a new stake in Microsoft in the 1st quarter valued at approximately $18,733,827,000. GAMMA Investing LLC boosted its position in Microsoft by 40,290.4% in the 1st quarter. GAMMA Investing LLC now owns 46,695,303 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $17,528,950,000 after buying an additional 46,579,693 shares during the period. Northern Trust Corp boosted its position in Microsoft by 16.1% in the 4th quarter. Northern Trust Corp now owns 83,787,746 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $35,316,535,000 after buying an additional 11,600,470 shares during the period. Finally, Vanguard Group Inc. lifted its position in shares of Microsoft by 1.1% during the 1st quarter. Vanguard Group Inc. now owns 691,386,214 shares of the software giant’s stock worth $259,539,471,000 after purchasing an additional 7,314,509 shares during the last quarter. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

    Analysts Set New Price Targets

    MSFT has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Morgan Stanley reiterated an “overweight” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Thursday. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “buy (b)” rating on shares of Microsoft in a research note on Wednesday. UBS Group restated a “buy” rating and set a $650.00 target price (up from $600.00) on shares of Microsoft in a research report on Thursday, July 31st. Melius Research upped their price target on shares of Microsoft from $595.00 to $625.00 in a report on Thursday, September 25th. Finally, Bank of America upped their price objective on shares of Microsoft from $585.00 to $640.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 31st. One analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-one have given a Buy rating and two have issued a Hold rating to the company. According to MarketBeat.com, the company presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $618.47.

    View Our Latest Stock Analysis on Microsoft

    Microsoft Stock Performance

    MSFT stock opened at $522.40 on Friday. Microsoft Corporation has a 1 year low of $344.79 and a 1 year high of $555.45. The stock’s fifty day moving average is $513.39 and its two-hundred day moving average is $470.36. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12, a quick ratio of 1.35 and a current ratio of 1.35. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.88 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 38.30, a PEG ratio of 2.29 and a beta of 1.03.

    Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, July 30th. The software giant reported $3.65 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.35 by $0.30. The firm had revenue of $76.44 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $73.79 billion. Microsoft had a return on equity of 32.44% and a net margin of 36.15%.Microsoft’s revenue was up 18.1% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $2.95 earnings per share. Microsoft has set its Q1 2026 guidance at EPS. On average, research analysts predict that Microsoft Corporation will post 13.08 EPS for the current year.

    Microsoft Increases Dividend

    The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 11th. Investors of record on Thursday, November 20th will be paid a $0.91 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Thursday, November 20th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a yield of 0.7%. This is an increase from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.83. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 24.34%.

    Insider Activity

    In other Microsoft news, CEO Satya Nadella sold 149,205 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 3rd. The stock was sold at an average price of $504.78, for a total transaction of $75,315,699.90. Following the transaction, the chief executive officer owned 790,852 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $399,206,272.56. The trade was a 15.87% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which is available through this hyperlink. Also, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,850 shares of Microsoft stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $527.32, for a total value of $2,557,502.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president directly owned 39,111 shares in the company, valued at approximately $20,624,012.52. This trade represents a 11.03% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

    About Microsoft

    (Free Report)

    Microsoft Corporation develops and supports software, services, devices and solutions worldwide. The Productivity and Business Processes segment offers office, exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft viva, and Microsoft 365 copilot; and office consumer services, such as Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other office services.

    Read More

    Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

    Institutional Ownership by Quarter for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)



    Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily – Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts’ ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com’s FREE daily email newsletter.

    ABMN Staff

    Source link

  • Well Done LLC Boosts Stock Holdings in Microsoft Corporation $MSFT

    Well Done LLC lifted its stake in shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report) by 8.9% during the second quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm owned 9,911 shares of the software giant’s stock after acquiring an additional 814 shares during the quarter. Microsoft accounts for about 0.9% of Well Done LLC’s portfolio, making the stock its 27th largest position. Well Done LLC’s holdings in Microsoft were worth $4,930,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Several other large investors have also recently bought and sold shares of MSFT. WFA Asset Management Corp increased its holdings in Microsoft by 27.0% in the first quarter. WFA Asset Management Corp now owns 1,016 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $427,000 after buying an additional 216 shares during the last quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. increased its holdings in Microsoft by 0.3% in the second quarter. Ironwood Wealth Management LLC. now owns 12,658 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $5,658,000 after buying an additional 38 shares during the last quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC increased its holdings in Microsoft by 410.4% in the third quarter. Discipline Wealth Solutions LLC now owns 2,659 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,144,000 after buying an additional 2,138 shares during the last quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. increased its holdings in Microsoft by 1.2% in the fourth quarter. Wealth Group Ltd. now owns 2,374 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $1,000,000 after buying an additional 28 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Eagle Capital Management LLC increased its holdings in Microsoft by 0.4% in the fourth quarter. Eagle Capital Management LLC now owns 23,097 shares of the software giant’s stock valued at $9,735,000 after buying an additional 96 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 71.13% of the company’s stock.

    Microsoft Stock Down 0.9%

    MSFT stock opened at $523.98 on Wednesday. The stock has a market capitalization of $3.89 trillion, a P/E ratio of 38.41, a PEG ratio of 2.30 and a beta of 1.03. The company has a 50 day moving average price of $513.38 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $469.08. Microsoft Corporation has a one year low of $344.79 and a one year high of $555.45. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.12, a quick ratio of 1.35 and a current ratio of 1.35.

    Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, July 30th. The software giant reported $3.65 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts’ consensus estimates of $3.35 by $0.30. Microsoft had a net margin of 36.15% and a return on equity of 32.44%. The company had revenue of $76.44 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $73.79 billion. During the same quarter last year, the business earned $2.95 EPS. Microsoft’s revenue for the quarter was up 18.1% on a year-over-year basis. Microsoft has set its Q1 2026 guidance at EPS. As a group, sell-side analysts expect that Microsoft Corporation will post 13.08 EPS for the current year.

    Microsoft Increases Dividend

    The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 11th. Stockholders of record on Thursday, November 20th will be paid a $0.91 dividend. This is a boost from Microsoft’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.83. The ex-dividend date is Thursday, November 20th. This represents a $3.64 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.7%. Microsoft’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is currently 24.34%.

    Insider Transactions at Microsoft

    In other news, EVP Takeshi Numoto sold 4,850 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, August 12th. The shares were sold at an average price of $527.32, for a total value of $2,557,502.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president owned 39,111 shares in the company, valued at approximately $20,624,012.52. This represents a 11.03% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Satya Nadella sold 149,205 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, September 3rd. The shares were sold at an average price of $504.78, for a total transaction of $75,315,699.90. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 790,852 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $399,206,272.56. This represents a 15.87% decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Corporate insiders own 0.03% of the company’s stock.

    Analyst Ratings Changes

    Several equities analysts have issued reports on the company. Royal Bank Of Canada reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $640.00 price objective on shares of Microsoft in a report on Friday, October 3rd. Piper Sandler raised their price objective on Microsoft from $600.00 to $650.00 and gave the stock an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, July 31st. Citigroup raised their price objective on Microsoft from $605.00 to $613.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, July 22nd. Melius Research raised their price objective on Microsoft from $595.00 to $625.00 in a report on Thursday, September 25th. Finally, Westpark Capital reaffirmed a “hold” rating on shares of Microsoft in a report on Thursday, July 31st. One investment analyst has rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, thirty-one have assigned a Buy rating and two have assigned a Hold rating to the company’s stock. According to data from MarketBeat, the company currently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average target price of $618.47.

    Read Our Latest Research Report on Microsoft

    Microsoft Company Profile

    (Free Report)

    Microsoft Corporation develops and supports software, services, devices and solutions worldwide. The Productivity and Business Processes segment offers office, exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, office 365 Security and Compliance, Microsoft viva, and Microsoft 365 copilot; and office consumer services, such as Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions, Office licensed on-premises, and other office services.

    Read More

    Want to see what other hedge funds are holding MSFT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT – Free Report).

    Institutional Ownership by Quarter for Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)



    Receive News & Ratings for Microsoft Daily – Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts’ ratings for Microsoft and related companies with MarketBeat.com’s FREE daily email newsletter.

    ABMN Staff

    Source link

  • Why Microshifting, the Hot New Flexible Work Trend, Is a Problem 

    Data shows that workers and bosses are already at war over where to work with management demanding more days in the office and employees trying to buck these mandates. But according to a recent report a new front has opened in the battle over workplace flexibility. It centers not on where employees work, but when. 

    When video conferencing company Owl Labs surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers for its 2025 State of Hybrid Work report, almost half reported they did not have enough flexibility in regards to when they worked. What kind of flexibility were they hoping to get?

    Something that Owl Labs calls “microshifting.” You may know it simply as breaking up your day as you see fit, taking an hour or so to run an errands or recharge when you need and returning to your work whenever suits you best. 

    Whether you use the latest business jargon for microshifting or not, it’s clear it’s popular with employees. 65 percent said they’d like to work this way and 37 percent said they would turn down a job that did not provide flexible scheduling. But experts suggest workers should be careful what they wish for. 

    A new term for an old phenomenon 

    Microshifting might be the new buzzword, but the idea of working whenever suits you best isn’t new. It’s been on the rise since the pandemic exploded old expectations about how our workdays are organized. 

    Back in 2022 Microsoft researchers looking at data on the use of the company’s products documented the rise of what they called the ‘triple peak day.’ Workers, the numbers showed, were most active on their computers before lunch and after lunch. That’s as you’d expect from a traditional office workday. But there was a new third spike in the usage data too. Many of us were logging in during the quiet hours right before bed. 

    The Microsoft researchers called this mass return to our laptops around nine or ten at night, the “triple peak day.” Owl Labs analysts would probably look at the same numbers and see it as evidence of “microshifting” in action. 

    The problem with an undefined workday 

    Just as previous research suggests that microshifting isn’t a new phenomenon. It also offers several reasons why workers might want to think carefully before they demand it as a formal policy from their organizations. 

    The appeal of microshifting is obvious. We’ve all had a dentist appointment or kid’s soccer game we need to be at during traditional work hours. The ability to step out for these obligations and make them up another time makes the juggle massively easier. But making the workday amorphous and open-ended also comes with costs. 

    A variety of pandemic-era data shows that when workers are offered more flexibility in where and when they work, their workdays tend to balloon. Yes, they have more control over their time. But they also tend to end up working more hours. Different studies came up with slightly different figures, but flexibility seems to have stretched the work day by an hour or two. 

    In real life, asking your boss for the flexibility to run out for some errands often translates to giving them permission to urgently email you at 8:30 at night and expect a prompt reply.  

    Does microshifting actually reduce stress? 

    Not only can asking for ‘microshifting’ embolden management to expect more after hours responsiveness. Other research suggests it might not be as good for workers’ peace of mind as they expect. When Google asked workers to report whether they prefer to keep their work and home lives rigidly separate (they labeled these folks “segmentors”) or blend the two (“integrators”), the search giant discovered one approach was associated with higher life satisfaction. 

    “We found that, regardless of preference, Segmentors were significantly happier with their well-being than Integrators. Additionally, Segmentors were more than twice as likely to be able to detach from work (when they wanted to),” Google reported. 

    Interweaving work and life sounds appealing. But it can also lead to a blurring of boundaries that can lead not only to longer hours, but higher stress and less relaxation. 

    Be careful what you ask for 

    All of this isn’t to say that workers have no idea what’s good for them and they should welcome being basically chained to their desks from 9 to 5. Adults have complicated, busy lives and have every right to demand the flexibility to handle personal issues during work hours when they arise. That’s a matter of simple practicality and respect. 

    But by turning an everyday level of understanding into a formal policy with a buzzy label, microshifting runs the risk of going a step further. It doesn’t just stretch the boundaries of the workday to accommodate real life. It threatens to dissolve them. 

    That might sound good at first. But evidence suggests that saying the workday is whenever seems convenient can have unforeseen consequences for workers. If you can declare it’s easier for you to get something done at 11 p.m., why can’t your boss? Or, for that matter, your constantly-on-the-clock brain? 

    It’s one thing to ask to step away for an hour here and there. It’s another to allow work to leak into every moment of your life. Before you advocate for microshifting, make sure that’s not what you’ll end up with. 

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jessica Stillman

    Source link

  • Microsoft buys another 100 MW of solar, this time in Japan | TechCrunch

    Microsoft is buying 100 megawatts of solar capacity from Japanese developer Shizen Energy, the latest in a string of renewable energy deals designed to power the tech company’s growing compute needs. 

    The agreement, which the companies announced late last week, covers four different solar developments; one is already operating and three are under construction. The deal covers output from the plants for 20 years.

    Seattle-based Microsoft already operates two data centers in Japan. Microsoft’s compute capacity is slated to expand as the company invests $2.9 billion in the country over the next year.

    Solar has become a favored source of power for tech companies and data center operators in recent years because it is quick and cheap to build. Solar is among the cheapest forms of new generating capacity, and projects are generally completed within 18 months. Plus, users can begin drawing power before the entire project is complete. 

    Microsoft has been a big buyer of solar in recent months. Since the year began, the company has contracted more than 1 gigawatt of solar capacity. 

    Tim De Chant

    Source link