Software & Apps - Page 4

The "attention economy" has reached new heights in China, and as pointed out by YouTuber Louis Zhao in a recent video, a phenomenon has emerged where hundreds of streamers are taking to the streets at night to create content.

Some streets and even the underpasses of bridges in China are being swarmed with livestreamers, as hundreds of content creators compete for viewers' attention. Zhao explains that this phenomenon is occurring for a multitude of reasons, with the primary one being the low barrier to entry for livestreaming and macroeconomic problems in China, such as the rising cost of living.

Zhao discusses why this is happening at night, the Chinese monetization model, and the role influencer agencies are playing in the influx of creators taking to the streets. Why the streets, or public places in general? In a nutshell, the content is more interesting when filmed in a public place, as there is chaos or a random element at play.

With only three months left on the clock for Windows 10 support, it seems Google's Chrome browser is now peeking at whether PCs running the older Microsoft operating system are eligible to upgrade to Windows 11.

Yes, Windows Latest picked up on Google's Chromium commit outlining this capability, which reads: "Adding a metric for determining Win11 upgrade eligibility. This metric is recorded at startup for Chrome running on Win10. Records a boolean histogram that represents if the hardware is capable of being upgraded to Win11."

According to Windows Latest's detective work, this change is already live in the web browser.

Windows 11 already does a fair bit of recommending apps and the like (or indeed promoting Microsoft's services), and we're apparently going to see a bit more of that behavior - this time with the lock screen.

As leaker PhantomOfEarth on X noticed (see the above post), there's a new 'discover widgets' ability inbound for Windows 11, although not officially at this stage (it is hidden in testing right now).

This will add suggested widgets to the lock screen presumably based on your past usage, and that'll happen 'periodically' according to the blurb describing the feature.

According to the latest Steam Hardware & Software Survey results, which were released last week, Windows 11 remains the dominant operating system for the PC gaming platform. With 59.8% of PC gamers using Windows 11, it has comfortably held the lead over Windows 10 for quite some time.

However, this is strictly related to PC gaming and Valve's Steam platform. When it comes to the global Operating System market, encompassing all systems, from office computers to those used by students and general at-home users, Windows 11 adoption has been relatively slow.

According to the latest StatCounter results, which have been tracking the Windows OS market share for years, Windows 11 has finally surpassed Windows 10 as the dominant operating system among PC users.

MSI's awesome Afterburner tool doesn't officially support AMD Radeon RX 9000 series "RDNA 4" graphics cards, but now it unofficially does.

MSI Afterburner developer "Unwinder" posted on the Guru3D forums to talk about the launch of the new beta of MSI Afterburner, which has AMD RDNA 4 GPU architecture support. MSI doesn't make or sell any Radeon RX 9000 series "RDNA 4" graphics cards, with Unwinder saying "so support for this GPU family inside the application is completely unofficial".

Not only do we have unofficial RDNA 4 GPU support, but the new MSI Afterburner beta also supports "future" NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series GPUs, which means it could be the RTX 5050 for both desktop and laptop.

The latest CPU-Z v2.16 update includes support for more AMD RDNA 4 and NVIDIA RTX 50 series GPUs, as well as multiple new AMD Ryzen CPUs.

CPU-Z v2.16 is a popular hardware monitoring tool that has had multiple new components added to its database, including the Navi 44-based Radeon RX 9060 XT that launched last month, which is AMD's latest RDNA 4-based GPU in both 8GB and 16GB configurations. CPU-Z v2.16 also updates its database with support for the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 series, supporting both the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5060, as well as support for the just-launched GeForce RTX 5050.

On the CPU side of things, CPU-Z v2.16 brings support for AMD's new Ryzen Z2 APUs including the Ryzen Z2 and Ryzen Z2 Extreme, both of which are custom Strix Point APUs for gaming handhelds with up to 8 cores and 16 threads of CPU power with RDNA 3.5 integrated GPUs.

If you're fed up with modern versions of Microsoft's desktop OS, then it might be refreshing to indulge in a bit of nostalgia, with a classic take on Windows that's a combination of old and new.

We should point out upfront that Windows Classic Remastered isn't an actual operating system - it's just a concept video created by a YouTuber (who has done plenty of these sorts of efforts in the past) - but it's intriguing nonetheless.

Check it out in the video clip above (which Betanews discovered) and you'll see that it's along the lines of Windows 95 meets Windows 11 (or 10), featuring a blend of Microsoft's contemporary interface configuration with a classic (read: dated, and it really is) GUI.

Microsoft has fixed a nasty bug with OneDrive, though you may need to perform the age-old tech trick of 'switch it off and on again' to restore full functionality to the cloud service on your device.

You may recall that the bug, which popped up in June, meant that some users - across all platforms except Mac (so that includes mobile and the web) - had search broken for them in OneDrive.

Whatever they searched for in the cloud storage locker wouldn't show up in the results presented (even though the files still existed - it was just that search wasn't registering them). Or worse still, the search result would just be entirely blank.

If you are one to get somewhat spicy over FaceTime, those days are now coming to an end as Apple has updated the feature to automatically stop video and audio if any nudity is detected.

The new stipulations for using FaceTime were discovered in the iOS 26 beta. Apple did mention last month when it unveiled iOS 26 that new features were coming to child accounts, but now it appears some of those features are making their way over to adult accounts as well. 9to5Mac reports that as part of the expansion of features, "Communication Safety expands to intervene when nudity is detected in FaceTime video calls, and to blur out nudity in Shared Albums in Photos."

What happens when FaceTime detects nudity? The video and audio of the call both freeze, and then the app will show the following message: "Audio and video are paused because you may be showing something sensitive. If you feel uncomfortable, you should end the call." There are two options to select from in this screen, "Resume Audio and Video" and "End Call". Presumably, users can simply resume the call and carry out their spicy activity.

Microsoft's Yusuf Mehdi, Executive Vice President and Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, published a new article on the Windows Experience Blog that revealed the total number of Windows users. Microsoft quietly updated that statistic after reports were published that showed, according to Microsoft's own figures, it had lost 400 million Windows users in just three years.

Using the Wayback Machine, a digital archive of the internet, we can see Microsoft initially wrote the following: "Today, Windows is the most widely used operating system, powering over a billion monthly active devices through an open and flexible platform that connects people." That figure of "over a billion monthly active devices" was then updated to this: "Today, Windows is the most widely used operating system, powering over 1.4 billion monthly active devices through an open and flexible platform that connects people."

Why did Microsoft update it? Reports surfaced shortly after this blog post was picked up that compared Microsoft's figure of "over a billion monthly active devices" to what the company was touting in a 2022 annual report of the same month, where it said, "There are now 1.4 billion monthly active devices running Windows 10 or Windows 11." Comparing the two figures, it's easy to work out that Microsoft supposedly lost 400 million Windows devices in the span of just three years.

NVIDIA is currently offering free Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions to GeForce RTX owners through the NVIDIA App. GeForce RTX 30 and RTX 40 Series owners are eligible for one month of Adobe Creative Cloud, while GeForce RTX 50 Series owners are eligible for two months. Unfortunately, GeForce RTX 20 Series owners aren't eligible.

NVIDIA and Adobe have a long-standing partnership, with the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of apps that includes Photoshop, Premiere Pro, After Effects, and other creative tools, offering enhanced features and RTX-accelerated performance when paired with a GeForce RTX GPU. Adobe Creative Cloud apps also include powerful AI features that you can run locally on GeForce RTX hardware.

The free Adobe Creative Cloud subscriptions are only available to new subscribers and can be redeemed via the Rewards/Redeem section in the NVIDIA App.

Microsoft has confirmed that the next version of Windows 11 is coming soon through version 25H2, which is being rolled out to Insider Preview builds, meaning that Insiders can already play around with the first 25H2 build.

In an announcement post to its website, Microsoft's Jason Leznek explains: "Today, Windows 11 version 25H2 became available to the Windows Insider community, in advance of broader availability planned for the second half of 2025". The new Windows 11 version 25H2 isn't a major upgrade in a technical way, as it shares the same platform release and servicing stack as version 24H2.

This means that upgrading your version of Windows 11 from 24H2 to 25H2 is "as easy as a quick restart" and it shouldn't take any longer than a normal cumulative update. This means that transitioning between Windows 11 versions much quicker to "OS swap" than the shift from Windows 11 version 23H2 to 24H2, which required replacing your installation files with newer versions.

Security researchers have discovered a security vulnerability within the popular compression software WinRAR, which leaves PCs exposed to hackers.

A new report from Bleeping Computer details the new security vulnerability that was first reported on June 5, 2025, through Zero Day Initiative. The vulnerability has been labeled CVE-2025-6218 and was discovered in older versions of the popular file compression tool.

More specifically, the vulnerability causes PCs to be vulnerable to hackers as they can bypass the app's built-in security features, enabling the machine to have an increased level of risk to malware and other executable software that could be potentially nefarious.

The iconic, or to some, infamous, Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) crash notice on Windows PCs has officially been retired by Microsoft after 40 years.

Microsoft's Blue Screen of Death has been present on Windows systems since the first version of Windows in 1985, and it has undergone several iterations, but its core remains largely unchanged. For those who are unfamiliar, a BSOD screen appears when the PC encounters a critical error it cannot recover from, rendering the system unstable and ultimately unsafe to use. So Windows automatically stops all processes to prevent any damage and presents a diagnostic screen to determine what happened.

BSODs can appear for many different reasons, but the most common causes are as follows: faulty drivers, hardware issues, software conflicts or bugs, Windows System file corruption, overclocking, malware, and power-related problems such as a sudden loss of power or an unstable power supply. Microsoft has announced in a new Windows blog post that it will be retiring the BSOD screen for a new Black Screen of Death, which it calls a "simplified UI for unexpected restarts."

WinRAR is still one of the most popular compression and decompression platforms, and most users have been using it for years or decades. However, a new report at Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative has confirmed that the popular app has a significant security exploit.

According to the announcement, CVE-2025-6218 has a very high severity rating of 7.8 on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) because it allows "remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on affected installations of RARLAB WinRAR" due to how file paths are handled within archive files. This vulnerability requires user interaction as the exploit can "cause the process to traverse to unintended directories" and execute code.

Yes, this opens the door to accessing sensitive data alongside system files, which can cause harm and make a device unusable. According to RARLAB, the exploit can place files in the Windows Startup folder, "potentially leading to unintended code execution on the next system login."

Dangerous malware has been detected on both the Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. Researchers have dubbed the nasty piece of software "SparkKitty."

The cybersecurity researchers at Kaspersky discovered SparkKitty in January 2025 and explained the malware uses optical character recognition to scan through an infected device's photos to harvest any relevant data that can help with deciphering a cryptocurrency wallet recovery phrase.

The idea behind this strategy by the malware creators is to stumble upon a screenshot or a photo of a user's cryptocurrency recovery phrase within their gallery. Most cryptocurrency exchanges tell users to write down their recovery phrase after their wallet is created. Most users promptly do this and then take a quick photo of the phrase in case the piece of paper is lost or simply for quick access to the phrase.

Sony has been summoned to appear in court as a class-action lawsuit filed against the company alleges its PlayStation Store pricing has violated laws.

The lawsuit was first announced in February 2025 and can be traced back to the Dutch consumer group Massaschade & Consument, alleging Sony "artificially" increased the prices of its products on the PlayStation Store. The Dutch consumer group described Sony's actions as an abuse of power, and summarized the price increases as a "Sony Tax."

Now, a new press release from the Massaschade & Consument states many Dutch PlayStation owners believe they have been pressured into "digital only" consoles since the release of the PlayStation 5 generation, and allegedly, consoles "work exclusively with digital games instead of physical discs."

Microsoft has been fighting the long defeat against the adoption rate of Windows 11, as the official ending of Windows 10 support ends in October this year, and more than half of Windows users are still on the previous generation OS.

The Redmond-based company has been attempting to sway Windows 10 users to adopt the latest operating system for the better part of its existence, with Microsoft really ramping up its efforts in the past year with in-operating system advertisements, messaging and constant public reminders.

While Windows 10's user base is trickling down it isn't decreasing at a rate that will see the majority of Windows 10 users moved over to Windows 11 before the October deadline arrives, meaning there will be millions of users left behind on machines that will no longer be receiving security updates, leaving them vulnerable to attacks as time passes.

Ion Storage Systems is on the verge of a battery tech breakthrough. What began as a university research project is now rolling off the production line and being tested by the US Department of Defense.

Lithium-ion batteries could eventually be replaced by solid-state batteries, which Ion Storage Systems in Beltsville, Maryland, is developing and is currently being tested by the Department of Defense and other major electronics manufacturers. What is the difference? According to reports, solid-state batteries are typically described as the "holy grail" of energy storage, as they replace the liquid electrolyte and graphite in a lithium-ion battery with a solid ceramic material and lithium metal.

The difference between these two designs is severe, with solid-state batteries having higher energy density, faster charging, greater safety, and longer lifespan. For those who don't know, lithium-ion battery cells can overheat and, in some cases, combust, causing thermal runaway, which is an escalating series of exothermic reactions within a battery cell. An example of this is an electric car battery catching fire and firefighters being unable to put it out as the cells within the battery keep combusting, resulting in more fires and a domino effect occurring.

Microsoft has rolled out a new update to Snipping Tool that enables Windows 11 users to easily make memes to send to their friends with a push of a button.

The new feature is built into video screen capture, which can be accessed by pressing Win + Shift + R, or simply searching for it and launching the app. Users can then select the record a screen recording video option, highlight the area of their desktop they wish to capture, and begin the recording.

Once the recording is finished, a preview of the video will open up, and at the top right-hand corner of the window, there will be a small "Export GIF" option. After selecting this option, users will be presented with two quality options: Low and High.