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Over the past couple of months, some strange things have been coming out of Microsoft's gaming division. And specifically in a positive sense.

The leadership of the gaming division was completely replaced with new faces over the winter and after that things have started to happen, quite a lot in fact.

First, in March, the first hints were announced about the upcoming next-generation Xbox, i.e. Project Helix.

Then in April, the leadership of the gaming division explained how players and games are being put back at the center of everything as the next steps for Xbox and Microsoft's entire gaming business are planned. In the same shake-up, the Microsoft Gaming unit was renamed back to simply Xbox - and Xbox Game Pass prices were lowered.

And now the rapid moves continue, as the head of the Xbox division, Asha Sharma, said this week (link goes to X/Twitter) that Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot will be completely removed from the Xbox platform and its development for Xbox will be discontinued immediately.

The world's most popular browser, Google's own Chrome, is now automatically downloading a huge additional file to every computer it's installed on.

The four-gigabyte weights.bin file automatically downloads to the computer and places itself in the same directory path where Chrome is installed.

This file is essentially the weight file for Gemini Nano, Google's own AI's local model, which tells the local AI model how it should function and what it can do.

So, in simple terms: a local Google AI model, running on the user's computer, is downloaded to (almost) every single computer with the Chrome browser installed.

It should be noted in this context that almost all: if the computer is too slow, has too little memory, or is otherwise incompatible with Gemini Nano, the local AI model will not be downloaded.

The issue was first noticed by The Privacy Guy, who wrote about it on his blog after first figuring out what was going on.

Chrome will henceforth use local AI to perform the browser's AI functions, such as suggesting what to write on social media or which tabs should be grouped together.

Microsoft has, over the past decade, delved into its history and released as open source some of the company's most important early products.

Previously, the giant has released as open source, among others, MS-DOS 4, released in 1988 and developed in cooperation with IBM, as well as the company's very first product, Altair BASIC.

Now the company has released a version of its DOS operating system that offers a glimpse into the events that ultimately led to the creation of the MS-DOS operating system, which grew into Microsoft's empire.

Microsoft, at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, was still a relatively small technology company. However, it had managed to secure a deal with the gigantic IBM to supply an operating system for IBM's soon-to-be-released, entirely new Personal Computer concept, which would use the 8086 processor.

Microsoft simply didn't have such an operating system in existence.

But another software company did: Tim Paterson had developed the 86-DOS operating system (formerly known as QDOS), which already ran on the 8086 processor, albeit in a different configuration than what IBM would later release.

Google is expanding YouTube's picture-in-picture function, or PiP mode, to all users worldwide. The feature has existed for years, but its use has been limited until now: previously it has only worked for American users - or elsewhere in the world through a paid YouTube Premium subscription.

Now the picture-in-picture function will be automatically enabled for all YouTube users, in all countries - meaning also for those using the free version of YouTube. According to the company, the feature will be rolled out in phases, "over the coming months".

However, the change does not make PiP mode completely identical for everyone, as the available features will continue to depend on the subscription type. Free users can only use the PiP feature when watching "long form" videos. This covers, for example, vlogs, documentaries and most other types of long videos - but music videos and YouTube Shorts are excluded.

Paying Premium subscribers will continue to get full benefit from picture-in-picture mode. They can use PiP mode for watching all kinds of videos, including music videos, allowing, for example, a single music video or a music video playlist to continue in the background, even if the user switches to other apps on their phone.

Nowadays, jumping from one computer operating system to another is already a reasonably painless process, as graphical user interfaces have adapted over the decades to be very largely similar to each other.

But sometimes, the biggest "friction" when moving to another operating system is caused by having to give up tools with which one has worked for decades. Hardly all programs are still available for every common operating system.

One such, very beloved small program is the open-source text editor Notepad++, which already has a certain cult status among Windows users.

It was named the world's most used text editor on several occasions in the 2010s, even though it is available only and exclusively for Windows.

But now, a fully native version for macOS has also been released.

Notepad++ for Mac has been made according to Apple's best programming practices, meaning it faithfully follows macOS user interface standards and other Apple-world principles. At the same time, however, its actual editor part is exactly the same as in the Windows version.

The program supports both Intel- and Apple Silicon-based Mac computers. Support for extensions is still under development, so it is not yet a completely perfect port.

According to media sources, two subsidiaries of Chinese Oppo, OnePlus and Realme, have merged.

The information is based on data from a Chinese leaker considered quite reliable, which was published on China's most popular social media service Weibo (in Chinese).

According to the information, the companies will establish a joint "sub-product center" that would coordinate the product launches and apparently also the product development of both brands. The same center would be responsible for coordinating the operations of both brands both in China and abroad.

The head of the center would be OnePlus's China director Li Jie, and his superior would be OnePlus's current head Pete Lau. In addition, the marketing of both companies will be centralized under another, separate unit.

OnePlus has been at the center of wild rumors throughout the beginning of the year, and a significant number of personnel are reported to have left the company in all Western countries. Around the same time, Oppo also re-merged Realme, which previously operated independently, back into Oppo's tighter corporate structure.

The European Commission has issued its preliminary findings from an investigation launched in January 2026, concerning Google's activities in relation to the Android operating system and AI services.

The findings, based on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), suggest that Google must open up Android's key functionalities and interfaces to competing AI services to ensure fair competition and service interoperability.

Currently, Google reserves many deep-level capabilities of Android devices primarily for its own AI products, such as Gemini.

The actions planned by the EU would force Google to allow competing AIs to perform tasks directly within other applications on the phone.

For example, a user could ask their preferred AI to send an email using their favorite app, order food, or share photos with friends, without Google's own services acting as a bottleneck.

One of the most visible changes for consumers would concern the activation of AI services.

The Commission demands that users must be able to easily activate competing AI services using their own wake words.

Valve's anticipated new Steam Controller has finally received its official unveiling. The controller will go on sale on May 4th at 8:00 PM Finnish time, and its price has been confirmed at 99 euros.

The new device is designed to work seamlessly with the entire Steam ecosystem, offering support for traditional PC computers, Steam Deck, and Steam Machine devices.

The controller's most significant technical innovation is its magnetic joysticks utilizing TMR (Tunnel Magnetoresistance) technology. These sticks consume less power and offer a more precise response than traditional Hall sensors. The technology also effectively combats the stick drift issue that plagues many game controllers.

In terms of control, Valve has combined the familiar touchpads from the first Steam Controller with a more traditional controller layout. The device features two precise touchpads, enabling gameplay for games requiring mouse control, such as strategy and simulation games.

Precision is further enhanced by gyroscope support, which can be activated simply by resting a finger on the sticks or the new grip sensor. Additionally, the back of the controller features four programmable extra buttons.

Microsoft's operating system Windows 11 has faced exceptionally harsh criticism from two different directions in recent months: firstly, users and consumer organizations have criticized the company for aggressive sales and subscription prompts added to Windows - and secondly, users have complained about the erosion of very basic things, such as performance and reliability.

Now the company is trying to repair its damaged reputation with a new initiative, known by the codename Windows K2, which aims to restore user trust and make Windows 11 a more stable and pleasant platform.

One of the most prominent points of contention has been Windows 11's so-called "second-stage setup," which can appear to the user months or even years after the device has been put into use. For the user, this manifests as a screen popping up when the computer starts, stating that the computer's setup is "almost complete," even if Windows has been in use for years. The process guides through a series of choices, offering, among other things, "recommended settings" for the browser, linking a phone to the computer, Office subscription options, and advertisements for the Xbox Game Pass service.

One of the most popular AI-based programming tools among developers, Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot, announced today a complete overhaul of its pricing.

Starting from the beginning of June 2026, GitHub Copilot's billing will shift largely to a model based on actual usage.

In principle, the basic pricing will still be based on a fixed monthly fee. But from now on, each pricing tier will only include a limited number of tokens, the basic units of AI computation.

If the tokens run out during the monthly subscription period, the user must either purchase additional tokens or wait until the current billing cycle ends and a new one begins.

The company explains the change in its blog by saying that within a year, the shift in how AI is used for programming has been so massive that the pricing had to be changed.

Previously, AI was used mainly as an assistant that you asked for instructions or requested to code a specific part of a project. But with the rise of agentic programming, the world is completely different.

In agentic AI programming, you give the AI a description of what the end result should be like and then set it to work independently. And the requests can be for entire, massive web services that AI agents build for hours - or even days - on their own.

The immensely popular online marketplace for used goods, Vinted, is emerging as one of Europe's most valuable startups.

The company's current shareholders sold shares to new buyers in a so-called secondary transaction round, and Vinted's market value was determined to be a staggering 8 billion euros.

Lithuanian Vinted reports that the company's revenue rose to over one billion euros in 2025 - and this figure includes only the commission fees collected by Vinted itself, not the value of products sold through it.

The company operates in 26 countries and is already profitable, meaning the company did not raise any working capital for itself through a share issue this time, but rather allowed existing shareholders to sell shares to new owners (the company is not yet publicly listed).

SpaceX and Cursor, a developer of an AI-based software development environment, have entered into a mega-deal that has turned out to be an even broader power play in the AI market. According to insider sources, Microsoft also considered buying Cursor, but ultimately withdrew from the negotiations before SpaceX secured a multi-billion dollar cooperation agreement and an option for a potential acquisition.

According to reports, Microsoft seriously evaluated acquiring Cursor but did not proceed to a formal offer. There has been much speculation about why Microsoft ultimately did not make a bid for Cursor: the company already has a strong position in developer tools through GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code, but on the other hand, Cursor has rapidly grown into one of the most popular AI-based programming environments. One possible obstacle to a Microsoft bid is thought to have been that the deal would likely have come under scrutiny from competition authorities.

After Microsoft bowed out, a cooperation agreement between SpaceX and Cursor was concluded. Under it, SpaceX has two ways to move forward: first, SpaceX will in any case pay Cursor about $10 billion for computing power and collaboration under the agreement - but it also retains the option to buy Cursor outright for about $60 billion.

We recently reported how the U.S. federal police FBI had managed to extract messages from the highly encrypted Signal messaging app from a suspect's phone.

The FBI had managed to get hold of Signal messages sent to the phone owner, even though the phone owner had already deleted the Signal app from their phone.

The trick worked because Apple's iPhones stored notifications received by the phone in a separate database saved on the phone.

So, authorities did not access Signal or its messages directly, but rather the notifications shown to the phone user about new messages - which also included information about the sender and the content of the message.

Following the publicity surrounding the trick, Apple has now changed the iPhone's notification history function, and it is no longer possible to recover the content of notifications marked as destroyed by the receiving app from the history data. And if an app is deleted from the phone, the iPhone's notification history simultaneously destroys all notifications received for that app from its history data.

The global component shortage, which began in the autumn due to the growth of AI companies, and the drastic increase in memory chip prices, are biting ever more severely into companies manufacturing consumer electronics.

Media sources, such as SammyGuru report that South Korean Samsung's mobile phone unit would be turning unprofitable for 2026.

If the forecasts are correct, 2026 would be the first time in the entire company's history that its mobile phone business would be unprofitable on an annual basis.

According to South Korean information (in Korean), the problem is that, for example, memory chip prices continue to rise, and companies selling products to consumers, such as Samsung's mobile phone unit, cannot raise prices charged to consumers at the same pace.

This year, a situation will likely be seen where upcoming mobile phone releases will feature less operating memory (RAM) and storage than before.

Sony is significantly changing the licensing terms for new digitally purchased PS4 and PS5 games.

Going forward, all new digitally purchased games will require the console on which the game is installed to go online at least every 30 days. This was noticed by YouTuber Lance McDonald, who shared his findings on social media (link goes to X/Twitter).

If more than 30 days have passed since the last online license verification for a game, the game cannot be played. Access to the game will return once the console is connected to the internet again and verifies the game's license.

The change will apply to all new digitally purchased games bought through Sony's online store for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.

The change does not apply to previously purchased digital downloads, nor does it apply to physically purchased games.

Apparently, the change was not meant to be implemented yet, at least a game historian referring to insider sources (X/Twitter link) claims. According to him, Sony apparently accidentally already put the updated digital rights management system into use.