Windows Weekly 958: Personal Turkey

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss Patch Tuesday, Windows 11, Microsoft accountability, AI superintelligence, .NET, Xbox, and much more.

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Windows 11

Patch Tuesday was yesterday, your new Start menu is right where Microsoft left it. Also new:≠

• Copilot+ PCs: Improvements to Click to Do, File Explorer, Voice access, and Windows Search
• All PCs, eventually: Taskbar improvements, Administrator Protection (off by default), Quality updates

Related: Heading into Ignite next week, Microsoft cites recent security wins in Windows 11 and Surface

First 26H1 build comes to Caanary to prove that there will be nothing new in it, ever

Hardware/earnings

• Qualcomm takes a one-time $5.7 billion hit thanks to Big Stupid Bill but still nails it in quarterly earnings

Microsoft

WSJ continues its Microsoft financial accountability criticisms

• Also reports that internal documents state OpenAI expects to lose $74 billion in 2028, the year Anthropic will break even
• Expliqueme: If I start a business and it loses money for three years in a row, it becomes a hobby. So WTF is OpenAI exactly?

AI

Microsoft AI creates a Superintelligence team as a sort-of alternative to AGI

Dev

Microsoft launched .NET 10 at .NET Conf on Tuesday – Plus, Visual Studio 2026 with a new monthly release schedule and Insider versions going forward

• Double-digit performance improvements again, somehow
• Uno announced Uno Platform Studio 2.0 with a fun surprise for Paul: They upgraded the original WPF version of .NETpad into a cross platform app in 3 minutes! There will be a demo on Thursday
• Related: .NETpad is transitioning to WinUIpad with the Windows App SDK rewrite. It is going poorly because Windows App SDK is terrible, cannot be open sourced quickly enough

Xbox

Steam announces a new videogame console, the Steam Machine!

Backbone Pro Xbox Edition is now available

Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition is here with with Xbox Play Anywhere support, Creations

Halo: Campaign Evolved is coming, so Halo: Infinite becomes a lot more finite

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 player on PC? Hope you enjoyed that 180 GB “update” you had to install before playing a year-old game (also got a 6.7 GB update Wednesday. For the love of God.)

GTA VI has been delayed yet again as it edges into Duke Nukem Forever territory

PlayStation

• Sony has now sold over 84 million PS5 consoles, meaning it has outsold every Xbox generation ever made
• Sony is selling a 27-inch gaming display in the U.S. and Japan

Tips and picks

Tip of the week: Solving the problem > Identifying the problem

When someone asked me about a little positivity for the holidays, it occurred that that’s my new job. That is, we used to look for “secrets” in computer systems. But now we solve and workaround enshittification problems. So it’s a shift, but basically the same service. And this is the one problem with the Cory Doctorow book: He identifies the problem but doesn’t have any advice about solving the problem ourselves. The key? Be selfish about getting what you want and need.

App pick of the week: Tiny11 Builder

After two Patch Tuesday updates and one Preview update (over 6+ weeks), my Tiny11 Builder-based Windows 11 install is still a champ with no regressions and no enshittification (aside from those updates, of course). This is emerging as a key tool to stop the enshittification of Windows 11, so I’m taking the next step: Customizing the install.

RunAs Radio this week: Azure Resiliency with Chris Ayers

https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/1010

Brown liquor pick of the week: Kyoto Whisky Kuro-Obi Black Belt Blended

https://kyotoshuzo.com/en/project/kyoto-kuro700/