Protesters have broken into a construction site of a new Microsoft data center in Amsterdam this morning. Members of the Geef Tegengas group helped organize the protest against the construction of three 85-meter data center towers in the outskirts of Amsterdam.

Reuters reports that around 100 people made it into the construction site, with some scaling a crane to place a "fuck AI" banner. Protesters also unfurled a "Microsoft powers genocide" banner on the construction site, and chanted "Microsoft has got to go" and "free Palestine."

Opposition to the new data center in Amsterdam comes more than a year after the city banned new data center …

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Microsoft is unveiling a new Xbox PC app that launches "up to 60 percent faster" than before, with an overhauled design to match new updates to Xbox Cloud Gaming on the web and smart TVs. Xbox Insiders will be able to start testing the updated Xbox PC app today, and the updated Xbox Cloud Gaming interface will start rolling out over the next few weeks.

Ever since Microsoft launched its Xbox Ally handheld devices last year, it was clear the Xbox PC app still needed a lot of work to feel more like an Xbox console experience on Windows. Microsoft has greatly simplified the app now, with a design that no longer feels like you're clicking a mous …

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While I wasn't expecting Microsoft to announce Windows 12 during its RTX Spark launch event last month, more than a few people were hoping to see something truly new. Between the growing frustration with Windows 11 and the muted response to Copilot Plus PCs, it's starting to feel like Microsoft needs to go bigger with its desktop OS.

Much of this year's Windows development has been focused on underlying performance improvements, after Microsoft acknowledged the bloat and reliability issues with Windows 11 and created a plan to fix them. That work is ongoing, and sources tell me there's now a big focus on quality for the next major release o …

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I revealed yesterday that the new Xbox Nano controller supports a Wi-Fi connection directly to Xbox Cloud Gaming, and now Microsoft is making it official today. Two new Xbox previews will let players try out using a phone as a controller on smart TVs, as well as cloud connect on the Xbox Nano to connect directly to cloud servers.

"Instead of a Bluetooth connection to your TV, cloud connect uses your Wi-Fi to connect directly to the cloud server running your game," says the Xbox team. "That can help reduce input latency, so gameplay may feel more responsive."

Players in the US will be able to preview the new cloud connect option for the Xbo …

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People, including on this staff, keep asking me with varying degrees of excitement or trepidation when the AI bubble will burst. I'll tell you what I tell them: If I knew that, I would make a life-changing bet on the market, levered up as far as I could, and then, after I made my money, go retire on a beach somewhere. Maybe run a cat sanctuary, who knows.

What I can tell you is that I read with interest a story in Bloomberg this morning: "Wall Street CEOs, Big Money Managers Divided Over AI Risks." The story itself is a roundup of stuff said at the 2026 Global Financial Leaders' Investment Summit in Hong Kong. Here's what caught my attentio …

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Microsoft is about to launch its new Xbox Nano controller tomorrow, and the tiny device has a little secret. The Nano can connect directly to Xbox Cloud Gaming over Wi-Fi to improve latency. It's a feature Microsoft hasn't officially announced yet, but one I've been anticipating since the Xbox Nano leaked earlier this year.

The Nano will be able to connect directly to Microsoft's cloud servers to reduce latency, much like how Google's Stadia controllers used to work. This new cloud connect feature for the Nano is being privately tested on the new Xbox Cloud Gaming website, and it will require you to pair the controller over Wi-Fi to Microso …

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Even though I knew Microsoft's new Xbox Nano controller was tiny, I still gasped when I unboxed it a few days ago. The compact controller is small enough to slip into a pocket unnoticed, and it has been designed specifically for younger people, or for anyone with smaller hands.

I'm not young, but I do have small hands, and I've been surprised at how comfortable the Nano is during gaming sessions. At just over 5 inches long, almost everything on this controller has been shrunk down somehow. The ABXY buttons are ever so slightly smaller than a regular Xbox controller, and the thumbsticks feel like miniature versions. Microsoft hasn't changed …

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Microsoft has been doing a lot of work to improve memory usage and increase performance on Windows 11 PCs over the past year. Last month the company revealed Windows 11 is now "more responsive" and runs better on PCs with 8GB of RAM, and now the company is releasing a new update today that includes further memory improvements.

"On 8 GB PCs, Windows is now up to 20 percent more responsive, and multitasking is up to 40 percent faster in our lab test," says Windows chief Pavan Davuluri. One of the key ways Microsoft has achieved better performance on PCs with 8GB of RAM is through compression.

"As a result, Windows can now keep up to 2 GB mor …

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Bethesda is officially confirming today that the next Elder Scrolls game will be called The Elder Scrolls VI Sentinel. The confirmation came in a less than 10-minute video celebrating 40 years of Bethesda game studios.

It's been more than eight years since Bethesda officially announced the existence of the sixth game in its Elder Scrolls series, and studio chief Todd Howard made the announcement today and called it the "perfect time" to fully name the game.

Bethesda isn't sharing any more details on The Elder Scrolls VI Sentinel today, though. The Xbox Wire press release on the name is literally just a picture of the logo.

I reported in N …

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Xbox's former chief operating officer, Helen Chiang, suddenly left Microsoft less than two weeks ago after being promoted into the role in July. I wrote in my Notepad newsletter last week that it seemed very weird for Chiang to suddenly depart Microsoft after 21 years with a surprisingly short memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma. Now, Chiang says she has "serious concerns" about how she was treated.

In a lengthy LinkedIn post - entitled "Clarity is Kindness," a reference to Sharma's WSJ profile - Chiang doesn't dispute that she was fired, but she doesn't say why she was let go. Eurogamer reported last month that Chiang had been "terminated for p …

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The latest Windows 11 Insider build adds some powerful new search features and quick settings while in Xbox mode. The Xbox shortcuts let you control things like Bluetooth, WiFi, and power settings without having to exit gaming mode.

The search improvements are quite comprehensive. You can now filter results for files, actions, or web results. You can also use the search box to perform actions like changing the screen brightness or volume, and even perform actions on a connected phone, including making calls. Results can also offer much more detail, like when a file was last modified and its author, or pull in charts for stock prices and we …

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OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic say they will adopt a new standard that publishers can use to opt out of being scraped by AI, as reported earlier by Search Engine Roundtable. With this control, publishers can apply their AI training preferences across multiple AI companies, instead of setting them individually.

The shared "policy token" signal is proposed by Kevin Kelley, a technical lead for standards at Anthropic, as part of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It will live within a website's robots.txt file, which has long signaled which web crawlers can and can't scrape a site - whether for search indexing, archiving, or …

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