Imagine your Windows taskbar was replaced by a soft green meadow of gently swaying grass, with small bunnies hopping about. Or mechs stomping back and forth with hellfire. Microsoft’s suite of killer Windows utilities, called PowerToys, might be getting another utility soon that lets you do just that.
It might not sound like the most productive tool. Distracting, even. But one of the ways…
Summary created by Smart Answers AI
In summary:
Microsoft’s Surface RTX Spark Dev Box is a specialized mini PC targeting AI developers, featuring an Arm-based RTX Spark chip with 20 cores and 6,144 CUDA cores.
PCWorld highlights this device offers 1 petaflop of AI compute…
This is the new, more productive Windows 11. On Friday, Microsoft said that it has begun making improvements to File Explorer, speeding up Windows under the hood, and minimizing distractions from the Windows widgets, all in the name of getting more done.
Microsoft’s moves…
Big August update fixes dozens of security flaws in Windows and Office
September 12, 2025
Yesterday was Patch Tuesday for September, and Microsoft provided security updates that address 80 new vulnerabilities. Microsoft categorized eight of the vulnerabilities in Windows and Office as critical, but none of them have been exploited for attacks in the wild yet. Sadly, Microsoft provides sparse details on the security vulnerabilities for self-searching in the Security Update Guide.
The…
Microsoft wants to soothe a big pain for PC gamers: Shaders
August 21, 2025
Microsoft said Wednesday that it’s working to remove one of the frustrating headaches for PC gamers: the need to compile shaders. Microsoft said that it will release an AgilitySDK in September to solve this problem, speeding up your time from downloading a game to playing…
Microsoft just launched an AI that discovered a new chemical in 200 hours instead of years
May 20, 2025
Microsoft launched a new enterprise platform that harnesses artificial intelligence to dramatically accelerate scientific research and development, potentially compressing years of laboratory work into weeks or even days.
The platform, called Microsoft Discovery, leverages…
When AI reasoning goes wrong: Microsoft Research shows more tokens can mean more problems
April 16, 2025
In a Nutshell
Microsoft Research finds that inference-time scaling methods for large language models don’t universally improve performance. Varying benefits, token inefficiency, and cost unpredictability challenge assumptions. Verification mechanisms enhance model accuracy. Brute-force scaling has limits; conventional models can match reasoning models on simpler tasks but struggle with…
For years, enterprise companies have been plagued by data silos separating transactional systems from analytical tools—a divide that has hampered AI applications, slowed real-time decision-making, and driven up costs with complex integrations. Today at its Ignite…
Microsoft has launched a new suite of specialized AI models designed to address specific challenges in manufacturing, agriculture, and financial services. In collaboration with partners such as Siemens, Bayer, Rockwell Automation, and others, the tech giant is aiming to…
SAN FRANCISCO, January 29, 2024 — In January 2024, VentureBeat launched the AI Impact Tour, a series of intimate events in cities across the U.S., each focusing on distinct aspects of the current and upcoming AI revolution. VB Lab just announced a partnership with Microsoft to sponsor three of these events, kicking off in New York in February.
Each invitation-only salon is an evening of…
