Microsoft recently stated that it wants to make Windows an agentic OS. If you're unsure as to what that means, "agentic" is what tech people call an AI system that can do stuff on its own without much input from the user. Some browsers are becoming agentic, although not everyone will recommend you use them. In terms of Windows, Microsoft wants to make its OS agentic by "connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere."

If you've ever used the search tool in OneNote, you may have noticed that it has a nasty tendency to get in the way of your text. This goes double if you're using the Horizontal Tabs layout, where all of your notes gets buried under the search box. Not ideal if you want to search for something related to said notes, and you just want to double-check something first.

I absolutely love working from the Terminal, whether that's Windows Terminal or whichever flavor of Linux I'm using that month. I've used Linux for nearly two decades, and am more at home on the command-line than anywhere else on my desktop. But once I've set up Windows Terminal to my liking, something is missing from my usual Terminal Emulation.

If you’ve ever used ChatGPT to help with your research or studies, you’ve probably noticed the limits creeping in. It’s brilliant at conversation and brainstorming, but when it comes to finding precise sources or verifying facts, it’s a bit constrained. It will cite sources sometimes, but the references aren’t always reliable. ChatGPT is better suited for general knowledge queries or conceptual explanations.

The first SSD I ever used was the Samsung 860 EVO — a 250GB SATA drive that was a phenomenal upgrade over my hard drive back in 2018. As great as it was, I naturally switched to NVMe SSDs over the next two years. When I cloned my Windows 10 installation to the WD Black SN770 in 2022, I had a spare SATA SSD on my hands. The 250GB capacity added little to my overall storage configuration, so I was left to decide what to do with my first-ever SSD.

Quick: tell me how old you are by telling me which app you used to download free music. Was it Napster? Kazaa? Usenet? Gnutella? WinMX? Morpheus? The Pirate Bay? Were you, I don't know, sending your friends songs on AIM or BBM? The possibilities are endless. For a decade or so, if you were online, you were probably stealing music.For this episode of Version History, we're telling the story of one of the last big names in file sharing: LimeWire. If the era of mainstream access to free music (mostly on college campuses and other fast networks) starts with Napster, it almost certainly ends with LimeWire. LimeWire was, in many ways, design …Read the full story at The Verge.

ESP32 boards are everywhere, even inside smart displays, speakers, and other devices. Many ESP32-based devices can perform multiple functions; each of these devices excels particularly at one task. And they cost far less than their commercial equivalents. That said, these ESP32 devices aren't all plug-and-play.

This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on Hollywood trends and streaming culture, follow Charles Pulliam-Moore. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.How it startedOnce upon a time (read: a few years ago), there were a pair of upstart streaming services called Quibi and Go90 that were supposed to appeal to phone-addicted millennials. These platforms were supposed to compete with Netflix and Amazon by offering up short-form videos designed to be watched on the go. Both services were touted as being the future of entertainm …Read the full story at The Verge.

A little while ago, Microsoft teased a new feature for Windows which allowed people to control the operating system using their voice. Some people weren't so excited about this announcement (including me), but the truth was, the jury was out on how good this feature was until we got to see it in action. Microsoft has tried several times in the past to add proper voice commands to Windows, and the introduction of LLMs that can parse English requests seemed like the perfect time to try again.

Each half is compact, and they fit together for easy travel. Hall effect gaming keyboards aren't uncommon. But Asus' ROG Falcata is the only one that's also a split ergonomic keyboard, aimed at alleviating wrist, hand, or arm pain. For the luxury of having it all, you'll pay $419.99, enough to buy a nice Hall effect keyboard and a split ergonomic one. It'd be worth it if the Falcata truly represented the best of both worlds, but I'm split. As a Hall effect board, it succeeds, offering a wealth of customization options, including the ability to let you adjust each key's actuation point by as little as a hundredth of a millimeter at a time. But if you're buying it for ergonomics, like me, then maybe n …Read the full story at The Verge.

If you've ever wanted to keep an eye on your surroundings without sending data to third-party servers, you've probably heard of Frigate. The open-source is a popular choice as an NVR that runs locally and taps into the power of AI to detect people, cars, and more. But Frigate isn't the only game in town. There's another contender worth looking at. It's called Viseron, and it's a self-hosted camera monitoring platform that offers a polished interface, widespread hardware support, and, most importantly, it works on your local network.

The Venn diagram between Pi-hole enthusiasts and avid tinkerers is pretty close to just being a circle. There's the obvious use-case of people throwing Pi-hole on the SBC that gave it its namesake, the Raspberry Pi; however, even if someone doesn't install Pi-hole on a board, there are still plenty of little tweaks you can make to the software itself to improve things.