AMD is officially announcing its Radeon RX 9060 XT GPU at Computex today. Like the number implies, this graphics card will challenge Nvidia’s recently released RTX 5060 and RTX 5060 Ti, with AMD offering models with 8GB or 16GB of VRAM. AMD is launching both models on June 5th, with the 8GB variant priced at $299, with the 16GB version priced at $349.
AMD is following Nvidia’s controversial choice to ship a modern GPU with just 8GB of VRAM in the year 2025. The 8GB of VRAM debate has been raging for months now, particularly because of the latest games that can be very demanding on the memory side. AMD is following in Nvidia’s footsteps, though, so it’ll be interesting to see what reviewers make of both cards in this important part of the market.
The RX 9060 XT will ship with 32 RDNA 4 compute units, a boost clock of 3.13GHz, and support for DisplayPort 2.1a and HDMI 2.1b. The total board power is between 150 watts and 182 watts, depending on the model. AMD claims its 16GB version of the RX 9060 XT will be around 6 percent faster than Nvidia’s RTX 5060 Ti at 1440p resolution, based on 40 games that AMD has tested itself.
We’re still waiting to hear how the RTX 5060 stacks up, because oddly, Nvidia launched its latest 50-series GPU yesterday without any reviews available. The GPU maker had reportedly prevented reviewers from obtaining the necessary driver to test the RTX 5060 ahead of the release date, presumably because it’s worried about the paltry 8GB of VRAM spec.
While the 8GB of VRAM choice for both Nvidia and AMD is controversial, Nvidia has managed to spark a further wave of outrage from PC gaming YouTubers over comments it has made to Gamers Nexus. In a 22-minute video, Gamers Nexus discusses the pressure from Nvidia to include Multi Frame Generation (MFG) in benchmarks against competitor cards that don’t have a similar feature. Gamers Nexus (GN) alleges that Nvidia has even implied that it would revoke access to interview Nvidia engineers unless the channel discussed MFG more.
Update, May 21st: Article updated with pricing and release date information that AMD didn’t share with The Verge ahead of its press conference.
The new AI actions in the File Explorer context menu.
Microsoft is starting to integrate AI shortcuts, or what it calls AI actions, into the File Explorer in Windows 11. These shortcuts let you right-click on a file and quickly get to Windows AI features like blurring the background of a photo, erasing objects, or even summarizing content from Office files.
Four image actions are currently being tested in the latest Dev Channel builds of Windows 11, including Bing visual search to find similar images on the web, the blur background and erase objects features found in the Photos app, and the remove background option in Paint.
Microsoft is also planning to test similar AI actions for Office files soon, enabling you to summarize documents stored in OneDrive or SharePoint, or quickly create AI-generated lists from files. These Office AI actions will be limited to Microsoft 365 commercial subscribers with a Copilot license, and consumer support is “coming later.”
It’s not clear if these AI actions can be disabled in the context menu, but they also join an “Ask Copilot” option that Microsoft added to the right-click menu of the File Explorer recently.
Alongside the AI-powered shortcuts in File Explorer, Microsoft is also testing some visual changes to the widgets feature in Windows 11, “with a more organized, personalized, and engaging feed,” according to the Windows Insider team. “In addition, we are introducing Copilot-curated stories into the feed.”
This latest Dev Channel build also includes a new “User Interaction-Aware CPU Power Management” feature, which Microsoft describes as an OS-level change to reduce power consumption on laptops and tablets. “After a period of inactivity on your PC, Windows now conserves power by automatically applying efficient power management policies,” says the Windows Insider team. “This happens seamlessly to save energy while you’re inactive, with full performance instantly restored the moment you get back to it.”
Microsoft is unveiling its own command-line text editor at its Build conference today. Edit on Windows will be accessible by using “edit” in a command prompt, allowing developers to edit files within the command line. It’s part of several improvements aimed at bettering the Windows experience for developers.
Edit on Windows is an open-source project by Microsoft, and it enables developers to edit files directly in the command line, just like vim, without having to switch to another app or window. Edit is small and lightweight, at less than 250KB in size. All the menu options on Edit have key bindings, and you can open multiple files and switch between them using the ctrl + P shortcut. Microsoft has also added find and replace to Edit, as well as match case and regular expression support, as well. Edit also supports word wrapping.
“What motivated us to build Edit was the need for a default CLI text editor in 64-bit versions of Windows,” explains Christopher Nguyen, product manager of Windows Terminal. “32-bit versions of Windows ship with the MS-DOS Edit or, but 64-bit versions do not have a CLI editor installed inbox.”
Microsoft also wanted to avoid the “how do I exit vim?” meme, so it built its own text editor instead of relying on other available options. “Because we wanted to avoid this for a built-in default editor, we decided that we wanted a modeless editor for Windows (versus a modal editor where new users would have to remember different modes of operation and how to switch between them),” Nguyen says.
Edit on Windows will be available in the Windows Insider program in the coming months. Microsoft has more information about Edit over at its GitHub repo.
Microsoft is also rebranding its Windows Dev Home to Advanced Windows Settings. “Advanced Windows Settings allow developers to easily control and personalize their Windows experience,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. Instead of being a separate app, it simply exposes additional toggles in the main Windows 11 settings interface, including the ability to enable File Explorer with GitHub control details.
A Microsoft employee disrupted the company’s Build developer conference in Seattle, Washington, this morning, protesting against the company’s cloud and AI contracts with the Israeli government. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had only been onstage for a matter of minutes before protesters started interrupting his speech, with one shouting, “Free Palestine!” Nadella continued his keynote, ignoring the protesters as they were escorted out of a hall inside the Seattle conference center.
Microsoft employee Joe Lopez, who has spent the past four years working as a firmware engineer on the company’s Azure hardware systems team, was one of the protesters who interrupted Nadella. He was also joined by a fired Google employee who was part last year’s sit-in protests against Google’s cloud contract with Israel.
We asked Microsoft to comment on today’s protest at Build, but the company did not respond in time for publication.
Shortly after Lopez’s interruption, he sent an email to thousands of Microsoft employees, telling them he was “shocked by the silence of our leadership,” just days after Microsoft responded to employee protests by claiming it hadn’t found any evidence that its Azure and AI tech has harmed people in Gaza.
“Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza,” says Lopez in his email. “Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians.”
Microsoft announced last week that it had recently conducted an internal review and used an unnamed external firm to assess how its technology is used in the conflict in Gaza. Microsoft says that its relationship with the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is “structured as a standard commercial relationship,” and that it has “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.”
This latest employee protest comes just weeks after after two former Microsoft employees disrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary event, with one calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profiteer” and demanding that Microsoft “stop using AI for genocide in our region.” A second protester interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and Nadella later on in the event.
The protests have been organized by No Azure for Apartheid, a group of current and former Microsoft employees rallying against Microsoft’s contracts with the Israeli government. The group accuses Microsoft of “supporting and enabling an apartheid state” by not suspending sales of cloud and AI services to Israel. It has also highlighted media reports that detail the Israeli military’s increased use of Azure and OpenAI technology to gather information through mass surveillance and use AI tools to transcribe and translate phone calls, texts, and audio messages.
Hossam Nasr — an organizer of No Azure for Apartheid and a former Microsoft employee who was fired for holding a vigil outside Microsoft’s headquarters for Palestinians killed in Gaza — called the company’s latest statement contradictory last week. “In one breath, they claim that their technology is not being used to harm people in Gaza, while also admitting they don’t have insight into how their technologies are being used,” said Nasr. “It’s very clear that their intention with this statement is not to actually address their worker concerns, but rather to make a PR stunt to whitewash their image that has been tarnished by their relationship with the Israeli military.”
Here is Joe Lopez’s email in full:
Fellow Microsoft workers and Microsoft leadership, By now you may have seen or heard of my disruption at the Microsoft Build keynote this morning. I have been working as a firmware engineer under Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure (AHSI) for the past 4 years. As a Microsoft worker – while I’ve had positive experiences here, working and learning with many incredible people – I can no longer stand by in silence as Microsoft continues to facilitate Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Like many of you, I have been watching the ongoing genocide in Gaza in horror. I have been shocked by the silence, inaction, and callousness of world leaders as Palestinian people are suffering, losing their lives and their homes while they plead for the rest of the world to pay attention and act.
Like many of you, I have tried to do my part in small ways. Staying informed, sharing information with friends, signing petitions, making donations. All the while continuing my work at Microsoft.
My disillusionment with Microsoft
Then I came across the No Azure for Apartheid movement, whose members have been organizing, taking action, and speaking out no matter the cost. I saw Ibtihal and Vaniya’s disruption of Microsoft’s 50th anniversary on April 4 and was shocked to hear the words coming from their mouths. Microsoft is killing kids? Is my work killing kids?
I was also shocked by the silence of our leadership. By the silence of Mustafa Suleyman, Brad Smith, Kevin Scott, Scott Guthrie, and Satya Nadella. “Why aren’t they responding”? I asked myself. “If we are truly not guilty, shouldn’t they deny these horrible accusations?”
I started to look deeper. I read the articles, saw the evidence, heard the testimonies of employees who were horrified to find out that the technology that we are building is being used by Israel in their mission to erase the Palestinian people.
A switch had been flipped. Presented with this information, I went into work everyday plagued by thoughts of the suffering that is being inflicted by a United States-Israeli war machine that runs on Azure. I joined Microsoft because I truly believed that it was the “more ethical big tech”. I thought that the work that I was doing was empowering people, not causing harm.
Microsoft’s admission of complicity
Microsoft recently uploaded a blog post, marking its first official response to the concerns that many have been shouting into their ears for years. Their statement falls far short of what we are demanding. Nontransparent audits into our cloud operations in Israel (conducted by no other than Microsoft itself and an unnamed external entity) that declare no wrongdoing by the company do not give me any sense of relief. In fact, this response has further compelled me to speak out. Microsoft openly admitted to allowing the Israel Ministry of Defense “special access to our technologies beyond the terms of our commercial agreements”. Do you really believe that this “special access” was allowed only once? What sort “special access” do they really need? And what are they doing with it?
Leadership rejects our claims that Azure technology is being used to target or harm civilians in Gaza. Those of us who have been paying attention know that this is a bold-faced lie. Every byte of data that is stored on the cloud (much of it likely containing data obtained by illegal mass surveillance) can and will be used as justification to level cities and exterminate Palestinians. We don’t need an internal audit to know that a top Azure customer is committing crimes against humanity. We see it live on the internet every day.
As one of the largest companies in the world, Microsoft has immeasurable power to do the right thing: demand an end to this senseless tragedy, or we will cease our technological support for Israel. If leadership continues to ignore this demand, I promise that it won’t go unnoticed. The world has already woken up to our complicity and is turning against us. The boycotts will increase and our image will continue to spiral into disrepair.
Call to action
My future children will one day ask me what I did for the Palestinian people as they were suffering and pleading for our help. I hope they will forgive me for my previous inaction. Many of you have children who may be asking you that question today. What will you tell them?
As Israel continues its deadly blockade of Gaza, and Netanyahu continues to assert that he will not rest until Gaza is fully occupied, we know that this situation is beyond dire. I wouldn’t have risked my career and my livelihood if I didn’t believe that to the core of my being. It’s terrifying to speak up, especially right now. Imagine your home being demolished as soldiers stand by cheering.
Your friends and family members dismembered by bombs that drop daily in your neighborhood.
Every member of your community on the brink of death due to starvation
Strangers staking claims to your home, awaiting your death.
Wouldn’t you hope that someone would speak up for you?
I recognize my privilege as a young person with little financial responsibility to anyone but myself and little risk of deportation as a US citizen. Not everyone can afford to do what I did without great risk to themselves and their family. But no act is too small when human lives are at stake. Sign the petition, join the movement, start the conversation with colleagues, please contribute whatever you can to the cause.
I know many of you out there are also considering leaving Microsoft for the same reasons I am. You are not alone. If you find it is too debilitating to work at this company and you wish to leave, please lean on our campaign to support. If we continue to remain silent, we will pay for that silence with our humanity.
Looking back, I’m ashamed of my past silence. But as the saying goes: “The best time to act was yesterday, the second best time is today.”
I reported in my Notepad newsletter earlier this month that Microsoft was getting ready to host Elon Musk’s Grok AI models, and now it’s official. At Microsoft’s Build developer conference today, the company confirmed it’s expanding its Azure AI Foundry models list to include Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini from xAI.
“These models will have all the service level agreements (SLAs) Azure customers expect from any Microsoft product,” says Microsoft. The Grok AI models will be hosted and billed directly by Microsoft, and offered to its own product teams and customers through its Azure AI Foundry service.
It’s a surprise addition that could prove controversial internally and further inflame tensions with Microsoft’s partner OpenAI. Microsoft has been steadily growing its Azure AI Foundry business over the past year, and has been quick to embrace models from a variety of AI labs that compete with its OpenAI partner.
In January I reported in Notepad that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had moved with haste to get engineers to test and deploy DeepSeek R1 as it made headlines around the world. Engineers didn’t sleep much over those days while they worked overtime to get R1 ready for Azure AI Foundry.
Sources tell me Nadella has been pushing for Microsoft to host Grok, as he’s eager for Microsoft to be seen as the hosting provider for any popular or emerging AI models. Grok is the latest model to join the Azure AI Foundry, which is quickly becoming an important AI service for Microsoft as it seeks to be seen as the platform to host AI models for businesses and app developers.
The announcement of Grok on Azure AI Foundry comes just days after the chatbot spent hours telling every X user that the claim of white genocide in South Africa is highly contentious. xAI blamed the behavior on an “unauthorized modification” to Grok’s code. xAI has had a similar problem earlier this year, when the company blamed an unnamed ex-OpenAI employee for pushing a change to Grok that saw it disregard any sources that accused Elon Musk or Donald Trump of spreading misinformation.
Naturally, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was quick to poke fun at Grok in an X post last week. OpenAI countersued Musk earlier this month over claims that the Tesla boss is using “bad-faith tactics to slow down OpenAI.” Elon Musk and OpenAI have been in a legal spat for months now, after Musk’s messy breakup with the AI lab he helped to cofound nearly 10 years ago.
Microsoft is making its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) open-source today, opening up the code for community members to contribute to. After launching WSL for Windows 10 nearly nine years ago, it has been a multiyear effort at Microsoft to open-source the feature that enables a Linux environment within Windows.
“It has been a consistent request from the developer community for some time now,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri in an interview with The Verge. “It took us a little bit of time, because we needed to refactor the operating system to allow WSL to live in a standalone capacity that then allowed us to open-source the project and be able to have developers go and make contributions and for us to ingest those into the Windows pipeline and ship it at scale.”
The WSL code is now available on GitHub, allowing developers to download it and build it from source, participate in fixes, or even add new features. The WSL community hasn’t had access to Microsoft’s source code in the past, but that hasn’t stopped them from making contributions that have helped improve WSL over the years. Davuluri says he’s now expecting that developers will use the open-source project to help improve WSL performance, or for more integration into Linux services.
It’s a major milestone for WSL, which started off life in 2016 as part of the Windows 10 Anniversary update. “At that time WSL was based on a pico process provider, lxcore.sys, which enabled Windows to natively run ELF executables, and implement Linux syscalls inside the Windows kernel,” explains Pierre Boulay, senior software engineer at Microsoft. “Over time it became clear that the best way to provide optimal compatibility with native Linux was to rely on the Linux kernel itself.”
Microsoft announced its second major version of WSL in 2019, eventually adding GPU support and then moving to ship the project separate to Windows. “It eventually became clear that to keep up the growing community and feature requests, WSL had to move faster, and ship separately from Windows,” says Boulay. “That’s why in 2021 we separated WSL from the Windows codebase, and moved it to its own codebase.” In the latest 24H2 update for Windows 11, Microsoft has fully transitioned WSL users to a package that’s separate from Windows, instead of the WSL component that was baked into the OS.
All of these changes to WSL in recent years have led Microsoft to close off the first ever issue raised on its WSL repo on GitHub, asking “Will this be open-source?” That answer is very much yes now, and it’s a part of making Windows more developer-friendly. “Our goal is quite simple: we want Windows to be a great dev box for developers,” says Davuluri. “That’s really the ambition.”
Microsoft launched its Copilot Plus PC and Windows AI efforts last year, and now it’s going a step further today with native Model Context Protocol (MCP) in Windows and the launch of the Windows AI Foundry. The groundwork is necessary for a future envisioned by Microsoft whereby automated AI agents assist their human companions.
Introduced by Anthropic late last year, MCP is an open-source standard that’s often referred to as the “USB-C port of AI” apps. Just as USB-C connects devices from many manufacturers to a variety of peripherals, developers can use MCP to quickly let their AI apps or agents talk to other apps, web services, or now even parts of Windows. Microsoft’s embrace of this protocol is a big part of its ambitions to reshape Windows and make it ready for a world of AI agents to be able to connect to apps and services in ways that haven’t been possible before.
“We want Windows as a platform to be able to evolve to a place where we think agents are a part of the workload on the operating system, and agents are a part of how customers interact with their apps and devices on an ongoing basis,” says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri in an interview with The Verge.
Microsoft is supporting MCP in a big way inside Windows, alongside even broader efforts to power what it calls the agentic web. To evolve Windows to this agentic world that Microsoft envisions, the company is introducing some new developer capabilities to enable this MCP framework for AI agents to expose key Windows functionality that AI agents will be able to access.
An MCP registry on Windows will act as the secure, trustworthy source for all MCP servers that AI agents will be able to access. “Agents can discover the installed MCP servers on client devices via the MCP registry for Windows, leverage their expertise, and offer meaningful value to end users,” says Davuluri. MCP servers will be able to access things like the Windows File System, windowing, or the Windows Subsystem for Linux.
In a demo during a briefing for Microsoft’s MCP in Windows announcement, the company showed me an early preview of how Perplexity on Windows could leverage MCP capabilities. Instead of having to manually select folders of documents, Perplexity can simply query the MCP registry to find a Windows file system MCP server to connect to. This allows Perplexity to perform file searches on behalf of a user in a more natural way, so you could simply say “find all the files related to my vacation in my documents folder,” instead of having to add this folder or the documents manually.
You could imagine how a world of MCP servers and hosts inside Windows might eventually open the operating system up to a lot more automated app features, especially for querying data from the web inside apps like Excel. We’re also starting to see Microsoft make parts of Windows AI-powered through AI agents. Copilot Plus PCs will soon have access to an AI agent settings interface, which lets you control system settings using natural language queries.
This type of MCP functionality also opens Windows up to a world of new attack methods from malicious actors. The security risks of MCP have been well documented in recent months, with warnings of potential token theft, server compromises, and prompt injection attacks. Microsoft is well aware of the security risks of embracing MCP at such an early stage, so the company is only making a preview available to select developers to help work on its feature set and secure it fully.
“I think we have a solid set of foundations and more importantly a solid architecture that gives us all the tools to start, to do this securely,” explains David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft, in an interview with The Verge. “We’re going to put security first, and ultimately we’re considering large language models as untrusted, as they can be trained on untrusted data and they can have cross-prompt injection.”
In the demo Microsoft showed me of MCP working in Windows, there were also early security prompts to let these AI apps access MCP capabilities. “Just like a web app asks for your location, you’re in control of what you share, and we want to make sure that’s intentional,” says Weston.
This is all early work from Microsoft right now, but the demo did remind me a little of Windows Vista’s UAC prompts that would pop up whenever you needed admin permissions to do things in Windows. Those became very annoying and a subject of mocking ads from Apple. Getting these prompts right will be key for Microsoft here, as it has to balance security and the convenience of using these AI agents and apps. I sure don’t want a repeat of UAC or even Apple’s copy-paste prompts that are highly irritating in iOS right now.
Microsoft is also committing to a variety of MCP security controls that Weston outlines in a blog post today, alongside some security requirements in order for MCP servers to appear in Microsoft’s official list, or registry. “These will prevent classes of attack like tool poisoning while also creating an open and diverse ecosystem of MCP servers,” says Weston. “More information on these requirements will be available when the developer preview is released.”
Alongside this big MCP push, Microsoft is also positioning its own AI platform inside Windows as the rebranded Windows AI Foundry. It integrates models from Foundry Local and other catalogs like, Ollama and Nvidia NIMs, and is designed to allow developers to tap into models available on Copilot Plus PCs, or to bring their own models through Windows ML.
Windows ML should make it a lot easier for developers to deploy their apps “without needing to package ML runtimes, hardware execution providers, or drivers with their app,” according to Davuluri. Microsoft is working closely with AMD, Intel, Nvidia, and Qualcomm on its Windows AI Foundry effort.
Microsoft’s four-day Build conference kicks off on Monday, May 19th, with a livestream starting at 9AM PT / 12PM ET. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will be on stage to present all the latest Windows, Office, and AI news, followed by developer sessions that will be free for anyone to register and watch online.
Build is Microsoft’s annual developer conference, where the company holds in-depth sessions for developers and professionals alike to hear the latest features for Windows, Office, Azure, and much more. We’re expecting to hear a lot about AI this year, particularly Microsoft’s vision for AI agents.
Microsoft’s annual developer conference kicks off today in Seattle, Washington, during the same week Google hosts its own I/O developer event in Mountain View, California. Build will be focused on Microsoft’s latest platform changes for developers, including new AI announcements that are bound to go head-to-head with Google’s own news.
Microsoft is streaming Build online free of charge and developers, students, and engineers will also be able to attend the in-person event at Seattle’s conference center. I’m expecting Microsoft to focus largely on AI this year, with emphasis on its push for AI agents that Microsoft envisions working alongside humans as digital colleagues.
We may also get some news on Microsoft’s plans to host Elon Musk’s Grok AI model. I revealed in my Notepad newsletter earlier this month that Microsoft is in discussions with xAI to host the Grok AI model on its Azure AI Foundry service, with a potential announcement at Build this week.
Perhaps we’ll also see OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appear at Build, just like he did last year. In Notepad earlier this year I revealed that OpenAI had been planning to launch its GPT-5 model in late May, but sources familiar with OpenAI’s plans tell me that’s less likely now due to service changes and recent delays affecting the launch of other models. Altman and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella are always keen to show that the partnership between the two companies remains strong — amid media reports of tensions — with the pair posing for a selfie earlier this month.
Nadella will kick off all of Microsoft’s AI announcements at 9AM PT / 12PM ET on May 19th, followed by a day two technical keynote hosted by Jay Parikh, Charles Lamanna, and Scott Guthrie.
How to watch Microsoft Build 2025 Keynote and Sessions
Microsoft has quietly launched an updated Spotlight-like launcher app for Windows that provides quick access to commands, apps, and development tools. The software maker originally launched its PowerToys Run launcher for Windows 10 nearly five years ago, and the updated version — Command Palette — now includes search for apps, folders, and files, calculations, system commands, and much more.
Command Palette is available for any Windows user from the PowerToys app, but it looks like Microsoft is now targeting this particular utility at power users and developers. You use Command Palette to access Windows commands or launch command prompts and shell shortcuts. Command Palette also has the ability to quickly open websites, web searches, and search through folders and files like you’d expect from a Spotlight- or -Alfred-like interface.
Microsoft has also moved its previous Window Walker PowerToy into Command Palette so you can easily switch between open windows. The most interesting part about Command Palette is that Microsoft has made it fully customizable thanks to extensions support so you can add additional commands and features beyond what’s available by default.
The PowerToys Command Palette has been available since early April, and you can activate it using the Win+Alt+Space shortcut once it’s installed. Microsoft says “Command Palette is intended to be the successor of PowerToys Run,” but both are still available for now. Microsoft made some tweaks and changes to Command Palette this week ahead of its Build developer conference on May 19th.
Microsoft is going to allow Xbox owners to pin apps and games directly to the Home UI. The latest change to the homescreen section of the Xbox dashboard will be available to Xbox Insiders this week, alongside options to hide system apps, choose the number of apps and games listed, and modify the size of the tiled UI.
You’ll soon be able to pin up to three of your recently played games or apps to the homescreen. “These pins will stay near the front of the list as you launch other things, giving you quick access to your go-to titles,” explains Eden Marie, principal software engineering lead for Xbox experiences.
If you don’t want to see system apps listed on the homescreen, you’ll be able to disable these to focus solely on games and apps. If you really want to take customization a step further, you’ll also soon be able to reduce the number of visible tiles in the recently played games and apps list. Microsoft says it’s “refining this setting” and it’ll be available to Xbox Insiders soon.
Microsoft is making these Xbox Home interface changes because fans have requested more customizability. “We’ve heard from many of you that Home should feel more like your space,” says Marie. “Whether it’s surfacing your favorite games, hiding what you don’t use, or simply making Home feel less crowded, this update is a direct response to that feedback.”
Microsoft previously tested a big overhaul of the Xbox Home UI in 2022, before shipping it broadly to Xbox owners in 2023. The software maker made more room for backgrounds, quick access to games, the store, and settings as part of the UI overhaul.
Microsoft says it has found no evidence that the Israeli military has used its Azure and AI technology to harm Palestinian civilians or anyone elsein Gaza. The software maker says it has “conducted an internal review and engaged an external firm,” to perform a review, after some Microsoft employees have repeatedly called on the company to cut its contracts with the Israeli government.
Microsoft says that its relationship with the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is “structured as a standard commercial relationship,” and that it has “found no evidence that Microsoft’s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.” Microsoft’s AI code of conduct requires that customers use human oversight and access controls to ensure cloud and AI services don’t inflict harm “in any way that is prohibited by law.”
The review process included “interviewing dozens of employees and assessing documents,” looking for evidence that Microsoft technologies were being used to target or harm anyone in Gaza. However, the company notes that it “does not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices,” so the evidence to inform its review is clearly very limited in scope.
The review comes just weeks after two former Microsoft employees disrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary event, with one calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profiteer” and demanding that Microsoft “stop using AI for genocide in our region.” A second protester interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later on in the event.
Both former Microsoft employees also sent separate emails to thousands of coworkers, protesting the company providing software, cloud services, and consulting services to the Israeli military. The first protester, Ibtihal Aboussad, was fired, and the second, Vaniya Agrawal, was dismissed shortly after putting in her two weeks’ notice. Both are associated with No Azure for Apartheid, a group of current and former Microsoft employees rallying against Microsoft’s contracts with Israel.
The group accuses Microsoft of “supporting and enabling an apartheid state,“ by not suspending sales of cloud and AI services to Israel, like it did to Russia when it invaded Ukraine. It has also highlighted reports from The Guardian and the Associated Press, based on leaked documents, that detail the Israeli military’s increased use of Azure and OpenAI technology to gather information through mass surveillance and use AI tools to transcribe and translate phone calls, texts, and audio messages. Microsoft also reportedly supplied 19,000 hours of engineering support and consultancy services to the Israeli military, in a deal that’s said to be valued at around $10 million.
“It is worth noting that militaries typically use their own proprietary software or applications from defense-related providers for the types of surveillance and operations that have been the subject of our employees’ questions,” says Microsoft in its blog post. “Microsoft has not created or provided such software or solutions to the IMOD.”
Hossam Nasr, an organizer of No Azure for Apartheid, has taken issue with Microsoft’s statement, saying it’s “filled with both lies and contradictions” in an interview with GeekWire.
“There is no form of selling technology to an army that is plausibly accused of genocide — whose leaders are wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court — that would be ethical,” says Nasr. “That’s the premise that we reject.” Nasr also highlighted that Microsoft’s statement mentions Israel multiple times, but “not once did they name Palestinians or Palestinian people or Palestine” in the blog post. “I think that still speaks to where Microsoft’s business interests truly lie.”
Wooting set the standard for gaming keyboards with the original 60HE three years ago, and now it’s ready to launch a successor with an upgraded design. The 60HE v2 will be available later this year with true 8K polling, a new closed-bottom switch, and an aluminum case that should all add up to a faster keyboard with an improved sound and feel.
The original 60HE popularized the use of Hall effect switches and a Rapid Trigger system. Together they sped up how quickly you can activate a key, improving competitive PC gaming. Keychron, Corsair, SteelSeries, and many others followed Wooting and now offer similar boards with Hall effect switches and Rapid Trigger-like systems.
The upgraded 60HE v2 will improve the original model’s speed thanks to true 8K polling and a low input latency of just 0.125ms. That’s the same latency as the 8kHz USB polling on the larger 80HE that Wooting launched last year.
Wooting is also shipping the 60HE v2 with a new “Lekker Tikken” switch, a closed-bottom Hall effect switch with a 4.0 mm actuation range. Hall effect switches use a magnet so the board can track how far a switch has been pressed, but the sound profile has typically been worse than Cherry MX-style switches. Gateron, Neon, and other switch makers have been steadily improving the sound profile of HE switches over the past few years, and Wooting’s upgraded switch promises a “uniquely marbly sound signature.”
Wooting has also improved the acoustics and typing feel by using a PET film layer beneath these new switches, and a Poron sandwich pad between the plate and PCB that’s designed to reduce vibrations. 60HE v2 owners will also be able to swap between a silicone block, which has soft sounds, or an EPDM foam block that produces a louder sounding board.
If you’re a fan of a split-spacebar then you’ll also be able to choose this option on the 60HE v2, and Wooting is even shipping this upgraded design inside a premium aluminum case. Just like the 60He before it, the v2 will be fully customizable and compatible with most after-market cases and keyboard parts.
“The original 60HE wouldn’t have happened without our community, and neither would this,” says Wooting CEO Calder Limmen. “We’ve learned a lot since the first release. The 60HE v2 is the next step.”
The Wooting 60HE v2 is expected to launch in Q4 2025, but Wooting hasn’t revealed pricing or exact release dates just yet.
Microsoft has been quietly killing off a number of Surface devices over the past few years. At first it was the Surface Headphones and Surface Earbuds that started to disappear, then came news of a changed "hardware portfolio" amid 10,000 job cuts at Microsoft in early 2023. A year later, Microsoft then killed off the Surface Duo and ended production of its innovative Surface Studio 2 all-in-one PC. Now, I'm hearing that another Surface device is on the way out.
Sources familiar with Microsoft's Surface plans tell me that the company stopped production of its Surface Laptop Studio 2 earlier this month. No more units are being produced, and Microsoft is planning to mark the device as end of life in June. I asked Microsoft to comment on the end of life for the Surface Laptop Studio 2, but the company declined to provide a statement.
Microsoft's official Surface resellers, however, were happy to discuss the status of Microsoft's folding laptop. "Surface Laptop Studio 2 has reached end of manufacturing and availability of supply will be limited and may vary by market going forward," confirmed one reseller when I queried about a lack of stock. "Microsoft will continue to support Surf …
Microsoft is shutting off access to its Bing Search results for third-party developers. The software maker quietly announced the change earlier this week, noting that Bing Search APIs will be retired on August 11th and that “any existing instances of Bing Search APIs will be decommissioned completely, and the product will no longer be available for usage or new customer signup.”
This abrupt removal of the Bing Search APIs will impact third-party app developers and rival search engines that tap into Microsoft’s search results to power their services. Microsoft is now recommending that developers use “grounding with Bing Search as part of Azure AI Agents” as a replacement, which lets chatbots interact with web data from Bing.
Wired reports that some big customers of Bing’s APIs will retain access to the service after the August 11th cutoff. DuckDuckGo uses Bing to power its search engine, and it has confirmed that it will still have access. Other smaller developers won’t be so lucky, though.
Microsoft’s move to cut off access to Bing Search APIs comes after the company has been hiking prices to access the data in recent years, and just a week before Microsoft’s big Build developer conference. It also comes just days after the US Department of Justice asked a court to split up Google’s ad tech empire.
Microsoft announced on Tuesday that it’s laying off more than 6,000 employees, around three percent of the company’s entire workforce. These are the biggest job cuts at Microsoft since it laid off 10,000 employees in 2023, and will impact employees across Microsoft’s businesses.
“We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” says Microsoft spokesperson Pete Wootton in a statement to The Verge.
I understand that the job cuts will impact all levels at Microsoft, including Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and some international offices. The cuts come just weeks after Microsoft CFO Amy Hood hinted at reducing the company’s management layers. “We continue to focus on building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers,” said Hood on April 30th. Microsoft also started ”performance-based” cuts earlier this year, which have targeted hundreds of employees.
Microsoft also laid off 650 more Xbox employees in September, as part of a restructuring related to the company’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Microsoft also cut around 1,000 employees from its HoloLens and Azure cloud teams in June.
Microsoft revealed earlier this year that it was planning to stop supporting Office apps (Microsoft 365) on Windows 10 after the October 14th end of support cutoff. Now, Microsoft is performing a U-turn and has pledged to continue providing security updates for Office apps on Windows 10 for an additional three years.
“To help maintain security while you transition to Windows 11, Microsoft will continue providing security updates for Microsoft 365 Apps on Windows 10 for three years after Windows 10 reaches end of support,” says Microsoft in an updated support article published last week. “These updates will be delivered through the standard update channels, ending on October 10, 2028.”
Microsoft quietly announced this three-year extension in late April in a separate support article for IT admins, and it reiterates that the Microsoft 365 apps will “continue to function as before,” but that businesses should upgrade to Windows 11 “to avoid performance and reliability issues over time.”
This latest language is a lot different to the blog post Microsoft issued in January that warned businesses that Office apps would no longer be supported on Windows 10 later this year. “To use Microsoft 365 Applications on your device, you will need to upgrade to Windows 11,” said Microsoft at the time.
Microsoft has been pushing consumers and businesses to upgrade to Windows 11 ahead of the end of support for Windows 10 on October 14th. The company declared at CES earlier this year that 2025 would be “the year of the Windows 11 PC refresh,” despite Windows 11 adoption lagging behind Windows 10.
Microsoft has also been trying to convince Windows 10 users to buy a new PC with full-screen prompts over the past year. Consumers who don’t want to buy a new PC or upgrade to Windows 11 will also be able to purchase Extended Security Updates for the first time. You’ll have to pay $30 for an extra year of updates, while businesses will be able to purchase up to three years of extended updates.
Microsoft is redesigning the Start menu in Windows 11 this month with a new, wider design that finally lets you disable the recommended feed of files and apps. While the new Start menu looks different to what exists in Windows 11 today, this design refresh could have looked a lot different as Microsoft has now revealed in concept images.
In a blog post detailing the process of redesigning the Start menu, Microsoft has revealed five concept designs that could have radically overhauled how the menu works in Windows. One includes an even more rounded menu with widget-like functionality, and a separate For You section that lists Teams meetings, YouTube videos, and recently used files.
Another concept has the For You section separated at the side, with the main menu focused on categories of apps, and another prototype imagines a landing page as the Start menu, complete with shortcuts, apps, files, and separate sections to access your Android phone, personalized app lists, and creation tools. There’s even a start menu concept that appears to take up the entire vertical space of a screen, complete with separated sections that you seem to scroll vertically to access.
“Whiteboards, Figma frames, floor-to-ceiling paper prototypes—nothing was too scrappy,” says the Windows design team. “We sketched out a plethora of layouts, letting ourselves go wild and discover new things before applying the editorial pen.”
Microsoft tested its various Start menu designs with more than 300 Windows 11 fans and even co-creation calls with select fans. “We watched eye-tracking heat maps swirl, counted scroll wheels, and listened for ’oh!‘s of delight to know where we were hitting the mark,” says the design team.
The focus of the new Start menu has been on being able to easily see your apps, customizability, speed, and not overhauling it too much to “respect three decades of muscle memory.” The result is a new Start menu that’s bigger and more customizable than what exists today. Being able to remove the recommended feed will be a welcome addition for many, and the phone companion panel looks like it’s fully built into the Start menu to provide quick access to recent calls, messages, and phone files.
Microsoft is testing this new Start menu with Windows Insiders over the coming month, so expect to see it show up for all Windows 11 users in the coming months.
Microsoft has brought me inside the Surface hardware lab from time to time over the years, showing me how its engineers test the hinges and fabrics that go into its products. They're usually typical engineering demonstrations, but last month I was invited to Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to see how the company built its two new smaller Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices. And this time around, I was pleasantly surprised to be shown how Microsoft uses magnets, robots, drop tests, and smoke to perfect its laptop and tablet designs.
The first stop on the tour led me inside Microsoft's advanced prototype center, where Surface engineers are constantly creating prototypes to refine the fit and finish on a new product like the Surface Pro 12-inch. One of the new challenges for this device was getting the Surface Pen to attach to the rear of the tablet - and stay there.
Microsoft wanted the stylus to attach with one hand but still be tough enough to stay in place when you slide it into a backpack. Engineers designed different magnet combinations, then tested their effectiveness with machines that record the force and distance needed to remove the pen. The team the …
Microsoft has just announced two new Surface devices, and neither comes with the company’s Surface Connect charging port. The Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch can now only be charged through USB-C ports on the devices, after years of Microsoft equipping its Surface laptops and tablets with the company’s proprietary magnetic charging port.
While this isn’t the first time Microsoft has ditched the Surface Connect port on a new device, it does feel like the company is now finally happy with charging over USB-C. This all but confirms that the next iterations of the larger Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models will also ship without the magnetic charging port.
The Surface 3 shipped with just Micro USB charging, but the company has always included the Surface Connect on its Surface Pro line of devices. The compatibility has meant you can use an existing Surface charger across a wide variety of Microsoft’s hardware dating back many generations.
Microsoft also no longer ships a charger in the box for its latest Surface devices, in compliance with EU initiatives to reduce e-waste. The switch to just USB-C charging on Surface devices comes nearly eight years after Microsoft was originally under pressure to add USB-C ports to its hardware. At the time, Microsoft created a USB-C dongle instead with former Surface chief Panos Panay joking that it was for “people who love dongles.”
