Your Patch Tuesday is showing. Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Leo Laporte go over the latest features for Windows 11 with the KB5053598 update. Also, the hosts discuss Press to Talk for Insiders, the Windows app replacing Remote Desktop, the agentic future of browsers, Copilot integration in GroupMe, Gemma 3, issues with Xbox Wireless Controller 5.23.5.0 firmware, Pocket Casts Web Player, and the "vibe coding" era. Plus, Fences 6 is now in Beta, on sale!

Woody Leonhard, RIP

• Like Jerry Pournelle, a major influence on Paul's career and writing style
• He had a mysterious life in latter years, not clear what happened

Windows 11

• Windows 11 gets all the features we've discussed recently
• Are we heading towards something bigger this year? Or just more of the same?
• New Canary and Beta (23H2) builds
• New Dev and Beta (24H2) builds
• Copilot in Windows 11 is getting Press to Talk
• Microsoft follows through on threat, kills Remote Desktop App - our latest outrage
• Arc crashed and burned but we can still evolve web browsers
• What about sidebar apps as a UX baby step forward?
• Does Edge need to restart every three days now to install updates?

Microsoft 365

• Google promotes ChromeOS/Chromebooks as the right client ... for Microsoft 365

Dev

• Build 2025 registration is now open

AI

• It's Microsoft's 50th anniversary, so it's going to announce AI something something
• Paul has agreed to attend this, from Mexico
• Also, report that Microsoft's in-house models now rival OpenAI is a hint
• Microsoft improves Think Deeper in Copilot using OpenAI o3-mini
• Google secretly owns 14-15 percent of Anthropic
• WTF is going on with Big Tech and regulatory evasion?
• On that note, CMA clears Microsoft + OpenAI specifically because of change to partnership
• Also, Google launches Gemma 3
• The Siripocalypse - AI is a hard computer science problem and Siri is the dumb blond in this space
• Amazon will use AI to dub movies and TV series because obviously

Xbox

• Rumor: Third-party portable Xbox gaming handheld this year, console resets in two years
• You could have cobbled this together solely based on what Microsoft has said publicly
• Xbox controller firmware, we have a problem

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Code with AI
• App pick of the week: Fences
• RunAs Radio this week: Strong Certificate Mapping in Active Directory with Richard Hicks
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Ardbeg 10

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Skype to EOL in May, replaced by the consumer Teams client, which is surprisingly good now. There are three possible responses to this:
- "They still make Skype?"
- The 13 people who rely on Skype for calling landlines come out of the woodwork.
- "Come on, Microsoft telegraphed this two years ago"

Plus, Opera previews what an AI agent in a browser can be used for. Firefox 136 now comes with vertical tabs (again), updated sidebar, AI chatbots, and more. And a Google-related tip that lets one see what it's like to live in the EU, minus the universal health care and other social safety nets.

Windows

• Microsoft FINALLY updates the Copilot app in Windows 11 for the 127th time - What Microsoft didn't tell anyone. Arrives just after the release of a native Mac client
• Three months of Recall, and it IS controversial, just not for the reasons you think
• Dev and Beta (last week): lock screen widget customizing (finally), Windows Share updates (again), Task Manager CPU usage calculation change (seriously), more
• It may be controversial at Linux, but not at Microsoft, which is all-in on Rust
• Intel delays Ohio fabs until after the earth careens into the sun
• Dell up 7 percent to $23.9 billion ($11.9 billion from PCs)
• HP up 2.4 percent to $13.5 billion ($9.2 billion from PCs)
• Intel brings Core Ultra Series 2 "Arrow Lake" chips to commercial market

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft finally puts Skype out of its misery
• A look back at 22 years of Skype
• Outlook Mobile gets delivery and read receipts

AI

• USA! USA! USA! Microsoft makes AI export changes easy to understand for our stupid government
• OpenAI announces GPT-4.5, its final non-reasoning model
• Microsoft brings new local distilled DeepSeek models to Copilot+ PCs, starting with Snapdragon X - a little hands-on
• Microsoft announces Dragon Copilot for clinical workflow
• Stability AI + Arm Holdings = generative AI audio, more to come
• Scam Detection in Messages for Pixel and Android
• Gemini improvements including upcoming features
• Apple's struggles with AI are real. Just ask Siri. Kidding, no one asks Siri anything

Xbox

• New Game Pass titles for first half of March
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3+4 coming to all platforms including Game Pass on July 11
• Sony slashes prices on VR2 months after it stopped building it

Tips & Picks

• Tip of the week: Remove yourself from Google Search results
• App pick of the week: Mo' browsers!
• RunAs Radio this week: Secure by Design with Karinne Bessette
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Knappogue Castle 16

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Week D - If a preview update falls in the woods and no one downloads it, did it really happen? Plus, what is going on with AI for free? Isn't this stuff expensive?

Windows

• 23H2/24H2: Taskbar share, Spotlight updates, Windows Backup snooze in File Explorer, etc.
• Dev and Beta - Semantic search adds OneDrive photo search to Search (was in File Explorer previously), plus the Recall reboot no one is explaining. And Trim comes to Snipping Tool (Canary and Dev)
• Beta (23H2) - Share gets a drag tray and Start All apps gets new Grid and Category views
• Lenovo revenues surge 20 percent
• Framework announces Ryzen AI-based Laptop 13, plus Laptop 12 and Desktop
• Opera adds Bluesky, Discord, and Slack to the sidebar

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft confuses us with a test of a free, ad-supported core Office suite for Windows
• Amazon kills Chime, will use Zoom, Teams, and more
• Amazon kills Appstore for Android
• Google to drop SMS-based 2FA, move to QR codes
• Paul continues with his SSO removals, an update on whether this impacts account availability

AI/Dev

• Following up the previous discussion with an interesting way to use an AI chatbot
• Alexa enters the AI era
• OpenAI now has 400 million weekly active users
• Microsoft cancels some AI datacenter leases, but it's not done spending billions on AI
• Anthropic releases first reasoning model, with a twist
• Gemini Code Assist is now free for individuals!
• ThinkDeeper and Voice in Copilot no longer have usage restrictions
• OpenAI makes Deep Research available to all paid customers
• Apple delays biggest Siri advances past iOS 18.4 - Math is hard, but AI is even harder
• Spotify expands into AI-narrated audiobooks
• NVIDIA partners to bring free ASL training to everyone
• .NET 10 Preview 1 arrives with the promise of LTS and not much else

Xbox

• Xbox Cloud Gaming gets its first update in a while, and it's a big one
• Microsoft delays Fable reboot to 2026

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: You can view the source code for the oldest machine-readable version of Unix
• App pick of the week: Adobe Photoshop for iPhone
• RunAs Radio this week: Exchange Server in 2025 with Michel de Rooij
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Glenrothes 15

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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On this episode, Paul Thurrott, Leo Laporte, and Richard Campbell explore the Windows KB5052086 update, the new Linux kernel drama, quantum computing, and more. Microsoft has announced the very first QPU, powered by topological qubits! Can the hosts possibly comprehend how this works? Later, Paul strongly emphasizes how AI can save users lots of time. Finally, Richard features a whisky that was recently brought to his 30th wedding anniversary!

Windows

• Dev channel: "Important" update because of the coming change to Recall soon, so here's an update that will wipe out all your data. One guess about what that means. Plus, a nice change to the Recall pop-up
• Release Preview (24H2): A preview of the preview that we'll preview next time
• Release Preview (23H2): Basically the same features as above, keeping the two aligned
• Microsoft deprecates location history in Windows 11 - depreciation junction, what's your function?
• Microsoft Edge gets more WebUI 2-based performance improvements
• Clipchamp just keeps getting better

Microsoft 365

• Microsoft: Just kidding about that MSA and Entra ID sign-in experience change
• Outlook mobile is getting a new font picker, a recall email feature (finally), and a minimize email message feature.
• ExpressVPN (TWiT sponsor) rewrote its VPN protocol in Rust

AI

• Microsoft announces a Quantum computing breakthrough, first quantum processor
• Flareup in Linux kernel management maps directly to what we see with AI - Two extremes but a clear middle ground
• Long story short, AI is all about saving you time - this is the "many small things, not one big thing" argument
• Copilot gets new voice capabilities
• In case you were worried, OpenAI formally rejects buyout offer
• OpenAI will also simplify its model offerings
• Google Gemini now remembers what you said, unlike your husband
• xAI launches Grok3 model but only for X Premium subscribers

Xbox

• Avowed launches, with many other Game Pass titles coming through the end of February
• Microsoft announced a generative AI model for video games
• Sony just had its best-ever PS5 sales quarter

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: Find your AI "ah-ha" moment
• App pick of the week: Notion. And iA Writer 2 for Windows is here
• RunAs Radio this week: Managed DevOps Pools with Eliza Tarasila
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Signal Hill

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Patch Tuesday has arrived and Windows 11 23H2/24H2 gets those preview updates we talked about two weeks ago: Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects on taskbar, File Explorer improvements, Mouse improvements, Time Zone changes without admin privileges, OneDrive continuity (23H2 only), Windows Share improvements (23H2 only), new keyboard shortcut for Magnifier. While Windows 10 gets the new Outlook, you lucky dogs!

Windows

• Beta (yesterday) - Beta/Dev window is open, Beta will move to 24H2 soon, this new build was for 23H2, new Paint app
• MIDI IS BACK BABY! MIDI Services 2.0 now in public preview
• Photos app OCR capabilities are back - feature was in testing but disabled in November, supports 160 languages
• HoloLens is finally dead: Microsoft partners with tech bro to offload US Army contract

AI/Dev

• Microsoft schedules Build 2025 for May 19-22. And then Google schedules I/O 2025 for May 20-21
• Elon Musk and investors supposedly make bid for OpenAI - hilarity ensues
• OpenAI is working on its own AI chip because everyone else is
• OpenAI is working on its own AI chip because everyone else is
• You don't have to sign in to OpenAI to use ChatGPT Search now
• Google Gemini 2.0 family is now (mostly) generally available
• GitHub Copilot is getting agentic features this year
• Remember the so-called Windows Copilot Runtime? It's finally happening. Paul noticed that the Windows App SDK 1.7 Experimental 3 release finally had WCR bits, was quietly released last week
• Coding hands-on: Building text rewrite and summarize requires just a few lines of code

More Earnings/Corporate

• Qualcomm - $11.7 billion in revenues, up 17 percent
• It's over! Arm Holdings drops Qualcomm complaint, will not terminate license
• Amazon: $188 billion in revenues, up 9.5 percent - AWS was $29 billion in revenues, up 16 percent. Amazon to spend $75 billion this fiscal year on AI infrastructure build-out, similar to MSFT, that figure was $28 billion in the previous quarter
• Here comes Conversational Alexa - Amazon devices and services event February 26
• Sonos continues its downward spiral - Before earnings, restructuring and layoffs

Xbox

• Good news/bad news on Xbox console sales - Better than expected, honestly
• Candy Crush Solitaire is first new King game under Xbox - Perfect King/Microsoft mashup

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: A few steps forward (and back) for the 2025 online accounts push
• Tip of the week #2: Get the Bill Gates book Source Code
• App pick of the week: Notion is nearly perfect
• RunAs Radio this week: Upgrading to Windows Server 2025 with Robert Smit
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Mackmyra Brukswhisky

Hosts: Paul Thurrott, Richard Campbell, and Mikah Sargent

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Microsoft reported that it earned a net income of $24.1 billion on revenues of $69.6 billion in the quarter ending December 31, the second quarter of its fiscal 2025. Those figures represent gains of 10 percent and 12 percent year-over-year (YOY), respectively.

Microsoft Earnings Overview

• Not much going on with client-side products and services, so a focus on AI
• Productivity and Business Processes: $29.4 billion in revenues, up 14 percent YOY. This was 42.2 percent of Microsoft's earnings
• Intelligent Cloud: $25.5 billion in revenues, up 19 percent YOY. This was 36.6 percent of Microsoft's earnings
• More Personal Computing: $14.7 billion, unchanged from the year-ago quarter. (Literally flat YOY.) This was 21.1 percent of Microsoft's earnings

Windows

• Microsoft testing AI-powered search in Windows 11 Dev
• New Canary build- Windows Midi Services preview, OneDrive resume, File Explorer folder resume
• Microsoft is experimenting with new Windows 11 UIs
• Microsoft Edge text rendering comes to all Chromium web browsers on Windows - That only took a few years
• Microsoft explains deprecation after using the term for decades

AI

• Week 2 of submitting to our new Chinese overlords
• Gemini catapults into the lead for a few days as Gemini 2.0 becomes broadly available
• Inspired by DeepSeek, OpenAI releases reasoning model to free ChatGPT
• This comes after Microsoft added it to Copilot
• Reasoning vs. traditional models
• Also, DeepSeek R1 is on Azure AI Foundry and GitHub
• Sam Altman discusses DeepSeek, more
• OpenAI offers up an AI research assistant

More Earnings (Lightning Round)

• Intel - $14.3 billion in revenues, down 7 percent
• AMD: Revenues up 24 percent, market share gains on Intel
• Apple - Record $124.2 billion in revenues, up 4 percent
• Alphabet/Google: Revenues at $96.47 billion, up 12 percent - CapEx expenditures closing in on MSFT
• Samsung - Revenues up 12 percent to $52.2 billion
• Spotify is profitable for full year for the first time

Microsoft 365

• Designer makes its way to Photos (Windows) and Microsoft 365 Copilot app (mobile)
• Microsoft is removing the VPN from Microsoft 365 Family and Personal
• Outlook for Mac to get email recall feature

Xbox

• Starfield is coming to Game Pass Standard this month, more Game Pass titles
• Forza Horizon 5 is coming to PS5
• Two Age of Empires titles are coming to PS5
• Remember that Microsoft partnership with Start.gg? Me neither
• Nintendo revenues, Switch sales fall more than expected, will no longer beat DS this fiscal year

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: It's time for an online account audit
• App pick of the week: Another week of big browser update
• RunAs Radio this week: Entra ID Protection with Corissa Koopmans
• Margarita of the week: 2 oz white tequila, 1.5 oz Triple Sec, 1 oz fresh lime juice.

Hosts: Leo Laporte and Paul Thurrott

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

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Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell go over the latest batch of preview updates for January 2025, including KB5050094! The big story of the week revolves around DeepSeek and its noticeable effects on the modern AI world. Sinofsky even wrote a big piece on the latest AI assistant!

Windows 11

• Preview updates for Windows 11, 10 arrive ahead of February Patch Tuesday
• Windows 11 - Taskbar preview improvements, Windows Studio Effects in the system tray, many File Explorer fixes, more
• Windows 10 - New Outlook replaces Mail, Calendar, People
• New Dev and Beta channel builds - Overdue battery icon updates in Dev, Snap Layout experiments in Beta
• New Canary build today with new File Explorer home view tab
• Microsoft to remove Dev Home from Windows - This never made sense, so that's fine, but its most important features will live on
• Microsoft Edge for Windows now has a Scareware blocker in preview

AI

• DeepSeek explodes out of the gate, sends Big Tech/AI stock reeling and opening up questions about how much money these companies are spending on AI
• Nadella, Altman, Nvidia all react to this change in interesting ways
• Steve Sinofsky - This was inevitable, disruption always comes from outside
• Ahead of this blockbuster development, a look at how the Microsoft/OpenAI relationship is changing - and now we need another look
• OpenAI announces Operator agent for ChatGPT in preview
• Google is bringing new Gemini features to Android and Pixel
• Google is also bringing NotebookLM to almost every Workspace tier, including the cheap one I (Paul) use, NotebookLM Plus to WS Standard and better

Microsoft

• Microsoft preps smaller Surface Pro and Laptop models with Snapdragon chips for some reason
• Microsoft is closing its UK-based "experience center"

Xbox

• Thanks to Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is the biggest game publisher in the world
• Phil Spencer: Xbox Series S a "real advantage" for coming portable gaming product
• Phil Spencer says hardware still "critical" to Xbox. More like "critical condition," am I right?
• No surprises at Xbox Developer_Direct, but a solid collection of games, including the new DOOM

Tips and Picks

• Tip of the week: It's time to start watching Dave's Garage
• App pick of the week: PowerToys, now with Zoomit
• RunAs Radio this week: Querying for Breaches with Mark Morowcyznski
• Brown liquor pick of the week: Blair Athol 12 Floral & Fauna

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

Download or subscribe to Windows Weekly at https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly

Check out Paul's blog at thurrott.com

The Windows Weekly theme music is courtesy of Carl Franklin.

Join Club TWiT for Ad-Free Podcasts!
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OpenAI, Stargate Project, 24H2 Preview

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Paul Thurrott, and Richard Campbell

For full show notes, visit https://twit.tv/shows/windows-weekly/episodes/916

Sponsors:

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