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Quick Links
Microsoft: the Company Doesn't Have Enough Electricity to Install All the AI GPUs in its Inventory
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said during an interview alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman that the problem in the AI industry is not an excess supply of compute, but rather a lack of power to accommodate all those GPUs. In fact, Nadella said that the company currently has a problem of not having enough power to plug in some of the AI GPUs the firm has in inventory. He said this on YouTube in response to Brad Gerstner, the host of Bg2 Pod, when asked whether Nadella and Altman agreed with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who said there is no chance of a compute glut in the next two to three years.
"I think the cycles of demand and supply in this particular case, you can't really predict, right? The point is: what's the secular trend? The secular trend is what Sam (OpenAI CEO) said, which is, at the end of the day, because quite frankly, the biggest issue we are now having is not a compute glut, but it's power — it's sort of the ability to get the builds done fast enough close to power," Satya said in the podcast. "So, if you can't do that, you may actually have a bunch of chips sitting in inventory that I can't plug in. In fact, that is my problem today. It's not a supply issue of chips; it's actually the fact that I don't have warm shells to plug into." [Emphasis added]
Nadella's mention of 'shells' refers to a data center shell, which is effectively an empty building with all of the necessary ingredients, such as power and water, needed to immediately begin production.
AI's power consumption has been a topic many experts have discussed since last year. This came to the forefront as soon as Nvidia fixed the GPU shortage, and many tech companies are now investing in research in small modular nuclear reactors to help scale their power sources as they build increasingly large data centers.
This has already caused consumer energy bills to skyrocket, showing how the AI infrastructure being built out is negatively affecting the average American. OpenAI has even called on the federal government to build 100 gigawatts of power generation annually, saying that it's a strategic asset in the U.S.'s push for supremacy in its AI race with China. This comes after some experts said Beijing is miles ahead in electricity supply due to its massive investments in hydropower and nuclear power.
Aside from the lack of power, they also discussed the possibility of more advanced consumer hardware hitting the market. "Someday, we will make a[n] incredible consumer device that can run a GPT-5 or GPT-6-capable model completely locally at a low power draw — and this is like so hard to wrap my head around," Altman said. Gerstner then commented, "That will be incredible, and that's the type of thing that scares some of the people who are building, obviously, these large, centralized compute stacks."
This highlights another risk that companies must bear as they bet billions of dollars on massive AI data centers. While you would still need the infrastructure to train new models, the data center demand that many estimate will come from the widespread use of AI might not materialize if semiconductor advancements enable us to run them locally.
This could hasten the popping of the AI bubble, which some experts like Pat Gelsinger say is still several years away. But if and when that happens, we will be in for a shock as even non-tech companies would be hit by this collapse, exposing nearly $20 trillion in market cap.
We Did the Math on AI's Energy Footprint. Here's the Story You Haven't Heard.
We did the math on AI's energy footprint. Here's the story you haven't heard.:
[...] Now that we have an estimate of the total energy required to run an AI model to produce text, images, and videos, we can work out what that means in terms of emissions that cause climate change.
First, a data center humming away isn't necessarily a bad thing. If all data centers were hooked up to solar panels and ran only when the sun was shining, the world would be talking a lot less about AI's energy consumption. That's not the case. Most electrical grids around the world are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels. So electricity use comes with a climate toll attached.
"AI data centers need constant power, 24-7, 365 days a year," says Rahul Mewawalla, the CEO of Mawson Infrastructure Group, which builds and maintains high-energy data centers that support AI.
That means data centers can't rely on intermittent technologies like wind and solar power, and on average, they tend to use dirtier electricity. One preprint study from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that the carbon intensity of electricity used by data centers was 48% higher than the US average. Part of the reason is that data centers currently happen to be clustered in places that have dirtier grids on average, like the coal-heavy grid in the mid-Atlantic region that includes Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. They also run constantly, including when cleaner sources may not be available.
Data centers can't rely on intermittent technologies like wind and solar power, and on average, they tend to use dirtier electricity.
Tech companies like Meta, Amazon, and Google have responded to this fossil fuel issue by announcing goals to use more nuclear power. Those three have joined a pledge to triple the world's nuclear capacity by 2050. But today, nuclear energy only accounts for 20% of electricity supply in the US, and powers a fraction of AI data centers' operations—natural gas accounts for more than half of electricity generated in Virginia, which has more data centers than any other US state, for example. What's more, new nuclear operations will take years, perhaps decades, to materialize.
In 2024, fossil fuels including natural gas and coal made up just under 60% of electricity supply in the US. Nuclear accounted for about 20%, and a mix of renewables accounted for most of the remaining 20%.
Gaps in power supply, combined with the rush to build data centers to power AI, often mean shortsighted energy plans. In April, Elon Musk's X supercomputing center near Memphis was found, via satellite imagery, to be using dozens of methane gas generators that the Southern Environmental Law Center alleges are not approved by energy regulators to supplement grid power and are violating the Clean Air Act.
The key metric used to quantify the emissions from these data centers is called the carbon intensity: how many grams of carbon dioxide emissions are produced for each kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed. Nailing down the carbon intensity of a given grid requires understanding the emissions produced by each individual power plant in operation, along with the amount of energy each is contributing to the grid at any given time. Utilities, government agencies, and researchers use estimates of average emissions, as well as real-time measurements, to track pollution from power plants.
This intensity varies widely across regions. The US grid is fragmented, and the mixes of coal, gas, renewables, or nuclear vary widely. California's grid is far cleaner than West Virginia's, for example.
Time of day matters too. For instance, data from April 2024 shows that California's grid can swing from under 70 grams per kilowatt-hour in the afternoon when there's a lot of solar power available to over 300 grams per kilowatt-hour in the middle of the night.
This variability means that the same activity may have very different climate impacts, depending on your location and the time you make a request. Take that charity marathon runner, for example. The text, image, and video responses they requested add up to 2.9 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In California, generating that amount of electricity would produce about 650 grams of carbon dioxide pollution on average. But generating that electricity in West Virginia might inflate the total to more than 1,150 grams.
What we've seen so far is that the energy required to respond to a query can be relatively small, but it can vary a lot, depending on the type of query and the model being used. The emissions associated with that given amount of electricity will also depend on where and when a query is handled. But what does this all add up to?
ChatGPT is now estimated to be the fifth-most visited website in the world, just after Instagram and ahead of X. In December, OpenAI said that ChatGPT receives 1 billion messages every day, and after the company launched a new image generator in March, it said that people were using it to generate 78 million images per day, from Studio Ghibli–style portraits to pictures of themselves as Barbie dolls.
Given the direction AI is headed—more personalized, able to reason and solve complex problems on our behalf, and everywhere we look—it's likely that our AI footprint today is the smallest it will ever be.
One can do some very rough math to estimate the energy impact. In February the AI research firm Epoch AI published an estimate of how much energy is used for a single ChatGPT query—an estimate that, as discussed, makes lots of assumptions that can't be verified. Still, they calculated about 0.3 watt-hours, or 1,080 joules, per message. This falls in between our estimates for the smallest and largest Meta Llama models (and experts we consulted say that if anything, the real number is likely higher, not lower).
One billion of these every day for a year would mean over 109 gigawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power 10,400 US homes for a year. If we add images and imagine that generating each one requires as much energy as it does with our high-quality image models, it'd mean an additional 35 gigawatt-hours, enough to power another 3,300 homes for a year. This is on top of the energy demands of OpenAI's other products, like video generators, and that for all the other AI companies and startups.
But here's the problem: These estimates don't capture the near future of how we'll use AI. In that future, we won't simply ping AI models with a question or two throughout the day, or have them generate a photo. Instead, leading labs are racing us toward a world where AI "agents" perform tasks for us without our supervising their every move. We will speak to models in voice mode, chat with companions for 2 hours a day, and point our phone cameras at our surroundings in video mode. We will give complex tasks to so-called "reasoning models" that work through tasks logically but have been found to require 43 times more energy for simple problems, or "deep research" models that spend hours creating reports for us. We will have AI models that are "personalized" by training on our data and preferences.
This future is around the corner: OpenAI will reportedly offer agents for $20,000 per month and will use reasoning capabilities in all of its models moving forward, and DeepSeek catapulted "chain of thought" reasoning into the mainstream with a model that often generates nine pages of text for each response. AI models are being added to everything from customer service phone lines to doctor's offices, rapidly increasing AI's share of national energy consumption.
"The precious few numbers that we have may shed a tiny sliver of light on where we stand right now, but all bets are off in the coming years," says Luccioni.
Every researcher we spoke to said that we cannot understand the energy demands of this future by simply extrapolating from the energy used in AI queries today. And indeed, the moves by leading AI companies to fire up nuclear power plants and create data centers of unprecedented scale suggest that their vision for the future would consume far more energy than even a large number of these individual queries.
"The precious few numbers that we have may shed a tiny sliver of light on where we stand right now, but all bets are off in the coming years," says Luccioni. "Generative AI tools are getting practically shoved down our throats and it's getting harder and harder to opt out, or to make informed choices when it comes to energy and climate."
To understand how much power this AI revolution will need, and where it will come from, we have to read between the lines.
See also:
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
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Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn't get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away.
It's unfortunately no longer enough to force websites to check your government-issued ID before you can access certain content, because politicians have now discovered that people are using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to protect their privacy and bypass these invasive laws. Their solution? Entirely ban the use of VPNs.
Yes, really.
As of this writing, Wisconsin lawmakers are escalating their war on privacy by targeting VPNs in the name of "protecting children" in A.B. 105/S.B. 130. It's an age verification bill that requires all websites distributing material that could conceivably be deemed "sexual content" to both implement an age verification system and also to block the access of users connected via VPN. The bill seeks to broadly expand the definition of materials that are "harmful to minors" beyond the type of speech that states can prohibit minors from accessing—potentially encompassing things like depictions and discussions of human anatomy, sexuality, and reproduction.
This follows a notable pattern: As we've explained previously, lawmakers, prosecutors, and activists in conservative states have worked for years to aggressively expand the definition of "harmful to minors" to censor a broad swath of content: diverse educational materials, sex education resources, art, and even award-winning literature.
Wisconsin's bill has already passed the State Assembly and is now moving through the Senate. If it becomes law, Wisconsin could become the first state where using a VPN to access certain content is banned. Michigan lawmakers have proposed similar legislation that did not move through its legislature, but among other things, would force internet providers to actively monitor and block VPN connections. And in the UK, officials are calling VPNs "a loophole that needs closing."
This is actually happening. And it's going to be a disaster for everyone.
VPNs mask your real location by routing your internet traffic through a server somewhere else. When you visit a website through a VPN, that website only sees the VPN server's IP address, not your actual location. It's like sending a letter through a P.O. box so the recipient doesn't know where you really live.
So when Wisconsin demands that websites "block VPN users from Wisconsin," they're asking for something that's technically impossible. Websites have no way to tell if a VPN connection is coming from Milwaukee, Michigan, or Mumbai. The technology just doesn't work that way.
Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state's terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of this provision could far outweigh any theoretical benefit.
Almost Everyone Uses VPNsLet's talk about who lawmakers are hurting with these bills, because it sure isn't just people trying to watch porn without handing over their driver's license.
- Businesses run on VPNs. Every company with remote employees uses VPNs. Every business traveler connecting through sketchy hotel Wi-Fi needs one. Companies use VPNs to protect client and employee data, secure internal communications, and prevent cyberattacks.
- Students need VPNs for school. Universities require students to use VPNs to access research databases, course materials, and library resources. These aren't optional, and many professors literally assign work that can only be accessed through the school VPN. The University of Wisconsin-Madison's WiscVPN, for example, "allows UW–Madison faculty, staff and students to access University resources even when they are using a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP)."
- Vulnerable people rely on VPNs for safety. Domestic abuse survivors use VPNs to hide their location from their abusers. Journalists use them to protect their sources. Activists use them to organize without government surveillance. LGBTQ+ people in hostile environments—both in the US and around the world—use them to access health resources, support groups, and community. For people living under censorship regimes, VPNs are often their only connection to vital resources and information their governments have banned.
- Regular people just want privacy. Maybe you don't want every website you visit tracking your location and selling that data to advertisers. Maybe you don't want your internet service provider (ISP) building a complete profile of your browsing history. Maybe you just think it's creepy that corporations know everywhere you go online. VPNs can protect everyday users from everyday tracking and surveillance.
Here's what happens if VPNs get blocked: everyone has to verify their age by submitting government IDs, biometric data, or credit card information directly to websites—without any encryption or privacy protection.
We already know how this story ends. Companies get hacked. Data gets breached. And suddenly your real name is attached to the websites you visited, stored in some poorly-secured database waiting for the inevitable leak. This has already happened, and is not a matter of if but when. And when it does, the repercussions will be huge.
Forcing people to give up their privacy to access legal content is the exact opposite of good policy. It's surveillance dressed up as safety.
"Harmful to Minors" Is Not a Catch-AllHere's another fun feature of these laws: they're trying to broaden the definition of "harmful to minors" to sweep in a host of speech that is protected for both young people and adults.
Historically, states can prohibit people under 18 years old from accessing sexual materials that an adult can access under the First Amendment. But the definition of what constitutes "harmful to minors" is narrow — it generally requires that the materials have almost no social value to minors and that they, taken as a whole, appeal to a minors' "prurient sexual interests."
Wisconsin's bill defines "harmful to minors" much more broadly. It applies to materials that merely describe sex or feature descriptions/depictions of human anatomy. This definition would likely encompass a wide range of literature, music, television, and films that are protected under the First Amendment for both adults and young people, not to mention basic scientific and medical content.
Additionally, the bill's definition would apply to any websites where more than one third of the site's material is "harmful to minors." Given the breadth of the definition and its one-third trigger, we anticipate that Wisconsin could argue that the law applies to most social media websites. And it's not hard to imagine, as these topics become politicised, Wisconsin claiming it applies to websites containing LGBTQ+ health resources, basic sexual education resources, and reproductive healthcare information.
This breadth of the bill's definition isn't a bug, it's a feature. It gives the state a vast amount of discretion to decide which speech is "harmful" to young people, and the power to decide what's "appropriate" and what isn't. History shows us those decisions most often harm marginalized communities.
Let's say Wisconsin somehow manages to pass this law. Here's what will actually happen:
People who want to bypass it will use non-commercial VPNs, open proxies, or cheap virtual private servers that the law doesn't cover. They'll find workarounds within hours. The internet always routes around censorship.
Even in a fantasy world where every website successfully blocked all commercial VPNs, people would just make their own. You can route traffic through cloud services like AWS or DigitalOcean, tunnel through someone else's home internet connection, use open proxies, or spin up a cheap server for less than a dollar.
Meanwhile, everyone else (businesses, students, journalists, abuse survivors, regular people who just want privacy) will have their VPN access impacted. The law will accomplish nothing except making the internet less safe and less private for users.
Nonetheless, as we've mentioned previously, while VPNs may be able to disguise the source of your internet activity, they are not foolproof—nor should they be necessary to access legally protected speech. Like the larger age verification legislation they are a part of, VPN-blocking provisions simply don't work. They harm millions of people and they set a terrifying precedent for government control of the internet. More fundamentally, legislators need to recognize that age verification laws themselves are the problem. They don't work, they violate privacy, they're trivially easy to circumvent, and they create far more harm than they prevent.
A False DilemmaPeople have (predictably) turned to VPNs to protect their privacy as they watched age verification mandates proliferate around the world. Instead of taking this as a sign that maybe mass surveillance isn't popular, lawmakers have decided the real problem is that these privacy tools exist at all and are trying to ban the tools that let people maintain their privacy.
Let's be clear: lawmakers need to abandon this entire approach.
The answer to "how do we keep kids safe online" isn't "destroy everyone's privacy." It's not "force people to hand over their IDs to access legal content." And it's certainly not "ban access to the tools that protect journalists, activists, and abuse survivors."
If lawmakers genuinely care about young people's well-being, they should invest in education, support parents with better tools, and address the actual root causes of harm online. What they shouldn't do is wage war on privacy itself. Attacks on VPNs are attacks on digital privacy and digital freedom. And this battle is being fought by people who clearly have no idea how any of this technology actually works.
If you live in Wisconsin—reach out to your Senator and urge them to kill A.B. 105/S.B. 130. Our privacy matters. VPNs matter. And politicians who can't tell the difference between a security tool and a "loophole" shouldn't be writing laws about the internet.
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The new variable allows users to disable the default behavior of boosting their NVIDIA GPU to a higher power state when running CUDA apps.
NVIDIA released today the NVIDIA 580.105.08 graphics drivers for NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, BSD, and Solaris systems as a new update in the latest NVIDIA 580 series.
NVIDIA 580.95.05 is here to introduce a new environment variable, CUDA_DISABLE_PERF_BOOST, which allows users to disable the default behavior of boosting their NVIDIA GPU to a higher power state when running CUDA apps. Setting this environment variable to '1' will disable the boost.
This release also fixes an issue that caused the vfio-pci module to soft lock up after powering off a virtual machine with passed-through NVIDIA GPUs, a bug that caused the Rage 2 video game to crash when loading the game menu, and a bug that caused the Metro Exodus EE (Enhanced Edition) video game to crash.
On top of that, NVIDIA 580.95.05 fixes a bug that could cause some HDMI displays to remain blank after unplugging and re-plugging them, as well as a bug that allowed VRR (Variable Refresh Rate) to be enabled on some modes where it isn't actually possible, leading to a black screen.
Also fixed in this release is a recent regression that prevented HDMI FRL (Fixed Rate Link) from working after hot unplugging and replugging a display, and an issue that could prevent large resolution or high refresh rate modes like 7680x2160p@240hz from being available when using HDMI FRL or DisplayPort.
Check out the changelog for more details about the changes implemented in the NVIDIA 580.105.08 graphics driver, which is available for download from the same page as a binary installer for 64-bit and AArch64 (ARM64) GNU/Linux distributions.
Binaries are also available for 64-bit FreeBSD systems, as well as 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris systems. NVIDIA 580.105.08 is considered the latest production branch version, and it is the recommended version for all users.
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https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/g-s1-86846/spiked-dinosaur-discovered-spicomellus
A dinosaur that roamed modern-day Morocco more than 165 million years ago had a neck covered in three-foot long spikes, a weapon on its tail and bony body armor, according to researchers who unearthed the curious beast's remains.
The discovery of the animal Spicomellus in the Moroccan town of Boulemane painted a clearer picture of the bizarre, spiked ankylosaur, which was first described in 2021 based on the discovery of a single rib bone.
Researchers now understand that the four-legged herbivore, which was about the size of a small car, was much more elaborately armored than originally believed, according to research published last month in the journal Nature.
"Spicomellus had a diversity of plates and spikes extending from all over its body, including metre-long neck spikes, huge upwards-projecting spikes over the hips, and a whole range of long, blade-like spikes, pieces of armour made up of two long spikes, and plates down the shoulder," research co-lead Susannah Maidment said in a statement to London's Natural History Museum.
"We've never seen anything like this in any animal before."
The Spicomellus' ribs were lined with fused spikes projecting outward — a feature never witnessed before in any other vertebrate, living or extinct.
Co-lead of the project Richard Butler, a paleobiology professor at the University of Birmingham, described seeing the fossil for the first time as "spine-tingling."
"We just couldn't believe how weird it was and how unlike any other dinosaur, or indeed any other animal we know of, alive or extinct," Butler told the Natural History Museum.
"It turns much of what we thought we knew about ankylosaurs and their evolution on its head and demonstrates just how much there still is to learn about dinosaurs," he added.
Researchers suggest that the Spicomellus' complex bone structure was used both to attract mates and deter rivals.
Discovering that the dinosaur had such elaborate armor that possibly prioritized form as much as function set the animal apart from its predecessors, which had less, more defensive covering on their bodies.
In addition to showy barbs along Spicomellus' exterior, remains of the animal's tail also provided a stunning new detail for scientists.
Fused vertebrae going down into its tail formed a "handle," likely leading to a club-like weapon at the end — a detail ankylosaur scientists had previously believed not to have evolved until the Cretaceous period, millions of years later.
"To find such elaborate armour in an early ankylosaur changes our understanding of how these dinosaurs evolved," Maidment said.
"It shows just how significant Africa's dinosaurs are, and how important it is to improve our understanding of them," she said.
[Ed. note: The link to the Nature article in the summary contains an embedded sharing token so that one can read the journal article. The link in the citation below is the clean link to the paywalled article page.]
Journal Reference: Maidment, S.C.R., Ouarhache, D., Ech-charay, K. et al. Extreme armour in the world's oldest ankylosaur. Nature 647, 121–126 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09453-6
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https://itsfoss.com/news/devuan-6-release/
Devuan is a Linux distribution that takes a different approach from most popular distros in the market. It is based on Debian but offers users complete freedom from systemd.
The project emerged in 2014 when a group of developers decided to offer init freedom. Devuan maintains compatibility with Debian packages while providing alternative init systems like SysVinit and OpenRC.
With a recent announcement, a new Devuan release has arrived with some important quality of life upgrades.
Codenamed "Excalibur", this release arives after extensive testing by the Devuan community. It is based on Debian 13 "Trixie" and inherits most of its improvements and package upgrades.
Devuan 6.0 ships with Linux kernel 6.12, an LTS kernel that brings real-time PREEMPT_RT support for time-critical applications and improved hardware compatibility.
On the desktop environment side of things, Xfce 4.20 is offered as the default one for the live desktop image, with additional options like KDE Plasma, MATE, Cinnamon, LXQt, and LXDE.
The package management system gets a major upgrade with APT 3.0 and its new Solver3 dependency resolver. This backtracking algorithm handles complex package installations more efficiently than previous versions. Combined with the color-coded output, the package management experience is more intuitive now.
This Devuan release also makes the merged-/usr filesystem layout compulsory for all installations. Users upgrading from Daedalus (Devuan 5.0) must install the usrmerge package before attempting the upgrade.
Similarly, new installations now use tmpfs for the /tmp directory, storing temporary files in RAM instead of on disk. This improves performance through faster read and write operations.
And, following Debian's lead, Devuan 6.0 does not include an i386 installer ISO. The shift away from 32-bit support is now pretty much standard across major distributions. That said, i386 packages are still available in the repositories.
The next release, Devuan 7, is codenamed "Freia". Repositories are already available for those adventurous enough to be early testers.
This release supports multiple CPU architectures, including amd64, arm64, armhf, armel, and ppc64el. You will find the relevant installation media on the official website, which lists HTTP mirrors and torrents.
Existing Devuan 5.0 "Daedalus" users can follow the official upgrade guide.
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I have been playing YouTube videos, despite the obvious risk to my mental health.
I am using Firefox on Linux and tend to have the "volume control" on my desktop because I use an external sound card to record or drive headphones.
I notice that each time an ad comes on, the volume setting jumps up. Its not that the ad sound level is higher (although it IS).
The actual volume setting is bumped up and remains so after I have skipped the advert.
Is this not illegal interference with my computer? An offence against some law?
[Editor's Comment: Has anyone else witnessed this? I watch Youtube but rarely see any ads in the video's that I watch. As for 'legal advice' - if it is happening we have probably signed our lives away somewhere that permits it. ]
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from the you-can-use-it-to-sweeten-your-poop-coffee dept.
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/mad-honey-deli-bal-turkey-black-sea
In the little wooden hut perched high on metal-wrapped stilts, the drone is high, loud and insistent.
With his beekeeping suit on, but hands uncovered, Hasan Kutluata squeezes the bellows on his pine-filled bee smoker. Pale wreaths swirl in the air, mirroring the mist that drifts over the slopes of the densely forested Kaçkar mountains outside.
The smoke is to calm the bees, masking the pheromone they release when they sense danger and which warns other bees to attack.
When Kutluata lifts the lid off the round lindenwood hives, the hum rises to a crescendo — but these bees aren't angry, it's just their honey that's mad.
We're here to harvest deli bal — bal means "honey" and deli means "crazy" or "mad" — and Turkey's Black Sea region is one of only two places in the world to produce it, the other being Nepal's Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain range.
"In our untouched forests, the purple rhododendron blooms in spring," Kutluata tells CNN. "The bees collect nectar from those flowers, and that's how we get the mad honey."
The nectar contains a naturally occurring toxin called grayanotoxin. The amount that makes it into the honey varies per season and what other flowers the bees have been feasting on, but a spoonful can pack enough buzz to deliver a gently soporific high — while a jar would land you in a hospital.
For millennia, deli bal has been used as folk medicine, a spoonful taken daily to lower blood pressure or used as a sexual stimulant. Today, this potentially dangerous delicacy sells at a premium price.
[...] Deli bal is a dark amber red and its scent is sharp. The taste is earthy with subtle barnyard notes. There are telltale sensations that announce the presence of grayanotoxin: A herbal bitterness underlies the sweetness of the honey and a burning heat catches the back of the throat.
[...] This is a food that has felled armies. In the 4th century BCE, the Greek military leader Xenophon wrote of soldiers traveling near Trabzon on the Black Sea coast who overindulged on the sweet treat: "Not one of them could stand up, but those who had eaten a little were like people exceedingly drunk, while those who had eaten a great deal seemed like crazy, or even, in some cases, dying men. So they lay there in great numbers as though the army had suffered a defeat, and great despondency prevailed."
[...] "The longer the honey stays in the hive, the higher its quality becomes. The quality is determined by the promille value," he explains. Promille refers to the concentration of the honey. "The higher the promille value, the higher the quality."
"Chestnut honey can be found everywhere, but it really makes a difference," adds Emine. "In terms of the promille value, it can be 600, 700, 800, but elsewhere, it might be 500 in terms of quality."
[...] To Emine, honey "represents health. If my throat is sore, I turn to honey. If I'm coughing, I turn to honey. If I'm feeling weak, I turn to honey again."
[...] Deli bal can be sold legally in Turkey and is legal in many countries. However, the US Food and Drug Administration does not recommend its consumption.
"Consumers should check labeling of honey to ensure it is not labeled as 'mad honey' or marketed for intoxicating qualities," an FDA spokesperson told CNN.
"Eating honey with a high amount of this toxin can lead to 'mad honey' poisoning, with symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, or dizziness. This type of poisoning is rare."
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AI resistance: Who says no to AI and why? – Digital Society Blog:
A poisoned dataset. A writers' strike that froze Hollywood for 148 days. Street protests against data centres. Behind each of these acts lies a growing global pushback against artificial intelligence. Drawing on the recent report, "From Rejection to Regulation: Mapping the Landscape of AI Resistance," by Can Simsek and Ayse Gizem Yasar, this article examines how artists, workers, activists, and scholars challenge the design, deployment, and governance of AI systems. It explores the drivers behind AI resistance and outlines a research agenda that treats these acts not as obstacles, but as vital contributions to democratic AI governance.
Artificial intelligence is catalysing a radical sociotechnical transformation, reshaping not only our technological infrastructures but also the institutions that organise society. In the midst of this shift, crucial questions arise: Who determines the direction of this change and the future we want to build? Who remains unheard in the conversation? Are we passive observers of increasingly deployed powerful algorithms, or do we have the agency and responsibility to challenge and reshape them?
Acts of pushback are already unfolding across diverse domains and geographies. While heterogeneous in form and motivation, these interventions share a critical orientation towards the pace, purpose, and underlying power structures of contemporary AI development. Rather than isolated incidents, they constitute elements of a broader landscape of AI resistance that demands closer attention.
To see today's pushback against AI in context, it helps to remember that resistance to new technology is nothing new. Technological paradigm shifts have consistently triggered societal concern and resistance, from the 19th century Luddites who opposed textile machinery due to labor displacement, to current debates on digital surveillance and algorithmic bias. As artificial intelligence emerges as a major transformative force, public reactions continue to alternate between optimism and concern. On the one hand, governments and private firms are committing unprecedented levels of investment in AI development; on the other, a growing amount of "AI resistance" raises fundamental objections to how these technologies are being designed, produced, deployed, and governed. But what exactly is AI resistance?
The concept of "resistance" in the context of AI encompasses a wide spectrum of actions and discourses that may be overt or subtle, organised or diffuse, individual or collective, oppositional or reformist. Drawing on insights from critical theory and science and technology studies, resistance to artificial intelligence can be understood as a form of agency exercised within existing systems of power. In this framing, the object of resistance is not technology per se, but the sociotechnical arrangements and asymmetries that both shape and are shaped by the development and application of AI.
Such resistance can manifest in diverse forms, including public protest, legal action, digital subversion, scholarly critique, and grassroots advocacy. Comparable to civil disobedience, these practices reflect a principled commitment to ethical, legal, or democratic norms perceived to be undermined by the development or deployment of certain AI systems. The term "AI resistance" therefore covers a broad range of actions and is open to multiple interpretations, given that both "resistance" and "artificial intelligence" are expansive and inherently abstract concepts. But what does AI resistance look like in practice?
In the report, we recorded numerous instances of AI resistance, including protests against the environmental impacts of data centers, opposition from big tech employees over military applications of AI, public outcry over the UK's A-level grading fiasco. While not intended to be exhaustive, we surveyed six key areas where such resistance has been particularly active:
- creative industries
- migration and border control
- medical AI
- higher education
- defense and security sectors and
- environmental activism
Thereby, we highlighted key actors in AI resistance, with particular emphasis on the role of civil society in mobilising public opposition. The report also looks at how governments have turned some forms of resistance into law. One example is the EU AI Act, which prohibits certain AI systems like deliberately manipulative AI practices.
The report also points to five main reasons why people push back against AI, each illustrated with real-world examples:
- First, there are socio-economic concerns, visible for example in the creative industries, where the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike took aim at AI's potential to replace human jobs
- Second, ethical issues arise when AI systems are opaque or biased, such as migration risk-assessment tools that can unfairly influence decisions about people's futures
- Third, safety risks are a concern, especially in healthcare, where flawed AI diagnostic results have led medical professionals to speak out
- Fourth, there are threats to democracy and sovereignty, including the use of AI for large-scale societal manipulation
- And finally, there's the environmental impact: climate-focused NGOs have highlighted research showing the significant carbon footprint of training large AI models
Journal Reference: Şimşek and Yasar (2025). From Rejection to Regulation: Mapping the Landscape of AI Resistance. Available here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5287068
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A new scheme will help to share the benefits of solar power in the daytime:
Australian households will be able to access free electricity for three hours every day, in an effort to encourage energy use when excess solar power is being fed into the grid.
The federal government scheme will require retailers to offer free electricity to households for at least three hours in the middle of the day, when there is often more electricity generated than is being used, leading to very cheap or even negative wholesale prices.
The Solar Sharer scheme will initially be introduced to consumers in default market offer regions like NSW, south-east Queensland and South Australia from July next year, with consultation to extend the scheme to other jurisdictions by 2027.
Households with smart meters will be able to run washers and dryers, air conditioning or any other appliances for free within the three-hour window.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen said the scheme would share around the benefits of solar panels, including to those without panels or who rented their homes.
"There is so much power in the middle of the day now that often the prices are very cheap or negative and this should be something, by our analysis, that energy companies can incorporate and offer," Mr Bowen told the ABC.
"It's not a silver bullet, and it is part of a suite of measures, but it's a good one. No one would claim that one particular policy solves all the challenges in the energy market."
Mr Bowen added that modern technology had made it easier for people to schedule appliances to start in the middle of the day, when electricity would be free.
"We want to see the benefits of renewable energy flow to all, even those without solar panels or batteries," he said.
But retailers have reacted with surprise to the announcement, saying it had not been raised in consultations on reforms to the network.
"This lack of consultation risks damaging industry confidence, as well as creating the potential for unintended consequences," the Australian Energy Council's chief executive Louisa Kinnear said in a statement.
[...] The government said the shift in demand was expected to lower costs for everyone by reducing peak demand in the evening, which would also minimise the need for "costly" network upgrades to ensure grid stability.
The federal government has been under pressure to address power price concerns, as state and federal rebates come off, and with a recent uptick in inflation as a consequence.
Akaysha Energy bags AU$460 million for 1,244MWh BESS in Victoria, Australia:
The financing is underpinned by a 15-year virtual tolling agreement with Snowy Hydro, representing the state-owned generator's first battery offtake agreement.
With a contracted capacity of 220MW, the arrangement constitutes the largest four-hour virtual toll agreement in the Australian market. Snowy Hydro has been active in securing battery storage capacity, with the company signing multiple offtake deals for over 2GWh of battery energy storage across Australia.
Located in southwest Victoria, the Elaine BESS will connect to the National Electricity Market (NEM) through existing transmission infrastructure. The strategic positioning will enable the battery system to manage transmission outage risks and support the integration of renewable energy sources, particularly wind and solar generation, into the grid.
[...] Akaysha Energy has established itself as a leading developer and operator of utility-scale battery storage systems in Australia. The company recently achieved commercial operation of Stage 1 of the 850MW/1,680MWh Waratah Super Battery.
See also:
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Moving From Windows To FreeBSD As The Linux Chaos Alternative
https://hackaday.com/2025/11/11/moving-from-windows-to-freebsd-as-the-linux-chaos-alternative/
Back in the innocent days of Windows 98 SE, I nearly switched to Linux on account of how satisfied I was with my Windows experience. This started with the Year of the Linux Desktop in 1999 that started with me purchasing a boxed copy of SuSE Linux and ended with me switching to Windows 2000. After this I continued tinkering with non-Windows OSes including QNX, BeOS, various BSDs, as well as Linux distributions that promised a 'Windows-like' desktop experience, such as Lindows.
Now that Windows 2000's proud legacy has seen itself reduced to a rusting wreck resting on cinderblocks on Microsoft's dying front lawn, the quiet discomfort that many Windows users have felt since Windows 7 was forcefully End-Of-Life-d has only increased. With it comes the uncomfortable notion that Windows as a viable desktop OS may be nearing its demise. Yet where to from here?
Although the recommendations from the peanut gallery seem to coalesce around Linux or Apple's MacOS (formerly OS X), there are a few dissenting voices extolling the virtues of FreeBSD over both. There are definitely compelling reasons to pick FreeBSD over Linux, in addition to it being effectively MacOS's cousin. Best of all is not having to deal with the Chaos Vortex that spawns whenever you dare to utter the question of 'which Linux distro?'. Within the world of FreeBSD there is just FreeBSD, which makes for a remarkably coherent experience.
[...] In case you're more into the 'just add water' level of a desktop OS installation process, the GhostBSD project provides the ready to go option for a zero fuss installation like you would see with Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux and kin. Although I have done the hard mode path previously with FreeBSD virtual machines, to save myself the time and bother I opted for the GhostBSD experience here.
[...] Since any open source software of note that runs on Linux tends to have a native FreeBSD build, the experience here is rather same-ish. Where things can get interesting is with things related to the GPU, especially gaming. These days that of course means getting Steam and ideally the GoG Galaxy client running, which cracks open a pretty big can of proprietary worms.
[...] The two available options here are to either try one's chances with the linuxulator-steam-utils workarounds that tries to stuff the Linux client into a chroot, or to go Wine all the way with the Windows Steam client and add more Windows to your OSS.
[...] As it turns out, the low-fuss method to get Steam and GoG Galaxy working is via the the Mizutamari Wine GUI frontend. Simply install it with pkg install mizuma or via the package center, open it from the Games folder in the start menu, then select the desired application's name and then the Install button. Within minutes I had both Steam and the 'classic' GoG Galaxy clients installed and running. The only glitch was that the current GoG Galaxy client didn't want to work, but that might have been a temporary issue. Since I only ever use the GoG Galaxy 1.x client on Windows, this was fine for me.
[...] Aside from gaming, there are many possible qualifications for what might make a 'Windows desktop replacement'. As far as FreeBSD goes, the primary annoyance is having to constantly lean on the Linux or Windows versions of software. This is also true for things like DaVinci Resolve for video editing, where since there's no official FreeBSD version, you have to stuff the Linux version into a chroot once again to run it via the Linux compatibility layer.
Although following the requisite steps isn't rocket science for advanced users, it would simply be nice if a native version existed and you could just install the package. Based on my own experiences porting a non-trivial application like the FFmpeg- and SDL-based NymphCast to FreeBSD – among other OSes – such porting isn't complicated at all, assuming your code doesn't insist on going around POSIX and doing pretty wild Linux-specific things.
FreeBSD now builds reproducibly and without root privilege
The FreeBSD Foundation is pleased to announce that it has completed work to build FreeBSD without requiring root privilege. We have implemented support for all source release builds to use no-root infrastructure, eliminating the need for root privileges across the FreeBSD release pipeline. This work was completed as part of the program commissioned by the Sovereign Tech Agency.
This is great news in and of itself, but there's more: FreeBSD has also improved build reproducability. This means that given the same source input, you should end up with the same binary output, which is an important part of building a verifiable chain of trust. These two improvements combined further add to making FreeBSD a trustworthy, secure option – something it already is anyway.
In case you haven't noticed, the FreeBSD project and its countless contributors are making a ton of tangible progress lately on a wide variety of topics, from improving desktop use, to solidifying Wi-Fi support, to improving the chain of trust. I think the time is quite right for FreeBSD to make some inroads in the desktop UNIX-y space, especially for people to whom desktop Linux has strayed too far from the traditional UNIX philosphy (whatever that means).
- https://www.osnews.com/story/143733/freebsd-now-builds-reproducibly-and-without-root-privilege/
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https://www.the-independent.com/life-style/lego-star-trek-uss-enterprise-d-b2861107.html
The set will be available in Lego stores and online November 28
Lego is releasing its first-ever Star Trek -inspired model — with an incredible recreation of the signature ship from the '80s TV series.
Made from 3,600 pieces, the Lego set is of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D, the spaceship that serves as the main setting of Star Trek: The Next Generation series, which ran for seven seasons, as well as the 1994 film, Star Trek Generations.
"[It] allows builders to craft a detailed replica of the iconic starship, complete with a detachable command saucer, secondary hull, and warp nacelles with distinctive red and blue detailing," according to a press release from Lego. "The model also features an opening shuttlebay and two mini shuttlepods, perfect for recreating classic scenes."
The set comes with nine mini-figures of Star Trek: The Next Generation characters, including Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander William Riker, Lieutenant Worf, Lieutenant Commander Data, Dr. Beverly Crusher, Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge, Counsellor Deanna Troi, Bartender Guinan, and Wesley Crusher.
Figurines also have some themed accessories, like an engineering case, phaser, or portable tractor beam generator.
Once the spaceship has been built, it can be placed on an angled display stand complete with an information plaque that is included in the kit. There is also a display tile, with Star Trek: The Next Generation branding, for the mini-figures.
However, fans should not expect to get their hands on the set before Black Friday, which falls this year on November 28. The set will be sold on Lego's website and in stores for $399.99.
In addition, customers who get the new Star Trek set will receive a special gift while supplies last: The Lego Icons Star Trek: Type-15 Shuttlepod. The set includes everything needed to make a mini-figure-scale model of the Type-15 Shuttlepod, a small two-person craft from the franchise.
Actor Jonathan Frakes, who starred in Star Trek: The Next Generation, celebrated the new U.S.S. Enterprise set from Lego in a statement.
"As Commander Riker, I spent a lot of time on the bridge of the Enterprise, and now fans can take the helm themselves... in LEGO brick form!" he said. "This set is a fantastic way to relive the adventures of the crew, piece by piece. Look out for a cameo in the livestream with an offer to win a signed Enterprise set!"
This isn't the first time that Lego has brought the setting of a beloved franchise to life. In September, the company launched the two-foot-tall Lego Star Wars Death Star, made up of a whopping 9,023 pieces. It also features the most mini-figures ever in a Lego set.
Priced at $999.99, the model recreates a busy cross-section of the Galactic Empire's infamous moon-sized planet destroyer from Star Wars.
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For years now, Valve has been slowly improving the capabilities of the Proton compatibility layer that lets thousands of Windows games work seamlessly on the Linux-based SteamOS. But Valve's Windows-to-Linux compatibility layer generally only extends back to games written for Direct3D 8, the proprietary Windows graphics API Microsoft released in late 2000.
Now, a new open source project is seeking to extend Linux interoperability further back into PC gaming history. The d7vk project describes itself as "a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 7 [D3D7], which allows running 3D applications on Linux using Wine."
[...]
Wine's own built-in WineD3D compatibility layer has supported D3D7 in some form or another for at least two decades now. But the new d7vk project instead branches off the existing dxvk compatibility layer, which is already used by Valve's Proton for SteamOS and which reportedly offers better performance than WineD3D on many games.
[...]
The D3D7 games list predictably includes a lot of licensed shovelware, but there are also well-remembered games like Escape from Monkey Island, Arx Fatalis, and the original Hitman: Codename 47. WinterSnowfall writes that the project was inspired by a desire to play games like Sacrifice and Disciples II on top of the existing dxvk framework.
[...]
Don't expect this project to expand to include support for even older DirectX APIs, either, WinterSnowfall warns. "D3D7 is enough of a challenge and a mess as it is," the author writes. "The further we stray from D3D9, the further we stray from the divine."
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How conspiracy theories led to the hacking of NASA servers and ruined a sysadmin's life: Gary McKinnon's story
He was looking for aliens - and became the No. 1 enemy of the state for the United States and started a diplomatic war between the United States and the United Kingdom
It's a good article with photos. Unlike most of the older articles covering Gary, this article was published 14.05.2025.
Imagine an IT guy who wanted to find traces of UFOs and instead found himself at the centre of the most high-profile hacking case of the 2000s. In 2002, Gary McKinnon, an ordinary sysadmin from Scotland, broke into NASA and the Pentagon computers under the nickname Solo. The United States immediately called it "the largest military hack of all time" and squeezed the most out of this formula - media, diplomatically, legally.
Ten years of trials, extradition requests, an autism diagnosis, an activist mother, hysteria around human rights, conspiracies, spaceships - all this is not a Netflix scriptwriter's invention, but a real story of a British man who just wanted to know if the US government was really hiding information about aliens.
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Draft proposals obtained by POLITICO show EU is breaking sacred privacy regime to placate industry:
European Union officials are ready to sacrifice some of their most prized privacy rules for the sake of AI, as they seek to turbocharge business in Europe by slashing red tape.
The European Commission will unveil a "digital omnibus" package later this month to simplify many of its tech laws. The executive has insisted that it is only trimming excess fat through "targeted" amendments, but draft documents obtained by POLITICO [paywalled] show that officials are planning far-reaching changes to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the benefit of artificial intelligence developers.
The proposed overhaul will come as a boon to businesses working with AI, as Europe scrambles to stay economically competitive on the world stage.
But touching the flagship privacy law — seen as the "third rail" of EU tech policy — is expected to trigger a massive political and lobbying storm in Brussels.
"Is this the end of data protection and privacy as we have signed it into the EU treaty and fundamental rights charter?" said German politician Jan Philipp Albrecht, who as a former European Parliament member was one of the chief architects of the GDPR. "The Commission should be fully aware that this is undermining European standards dramatically."
Brussels' shift on privacy comes as it frets over Europe's waning economic power. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi namechecked the General Data Protection Regulation as holding back European innovation on artificial intelligence in his landmark competitiveness report last year.
[...] In past months, Commission officials have sought to preempt worries [41:53 --JE] that it was overhauling the privacy rulebook. It insisted that its simplification proposals wouldn't touch the underlying principles of the GDPR.
Now that draft plans are out, civil society campaigners have begun sounding the alarm.
The Commission is "secretly trying to overrun everyone else in Brussels," said Max Schrems, founder of Austrian privacy group Noyb — and Europe's infamous privacy campaigner who was behind court cases that brought down major data transfer deals with the United States in the past. "This disregards every rule on good lawmaking, with terrible results," he said.
One line of attack from privacy groups is to poke holes in what they say is a rushed omnibus process. While the GDPR took years to negotiate, public consultation on the digital omnibus only ended in October. The Commission has not prepared impact assessments to accompany its proposals, as it says the changes are only targeted and technical.
The Commission's tunnel vision on the AI race has resulted in a "poorly drafted 'quick shot' in a highly complex and sensitive area," said Schrems.
[...] Draft changes would create new exceptions for AI companies that would allow them to legally process special categories of data (like a person's religious or political beliefs, ethnicity or health data) to train and operate their tech. The Commission is also planning to reframe the definition of such special category data, which are afforded extra protections under the privacy rules.
Officials also want to redefine what constitutes as personal data, saying that pseudonymized data (where personal details have been obscured so a person can't be identified) might not always be subject to the GDPR's protections, a change that reflects a recent ruling from the EU's top court.
Finally, it wants to reform Europe's pesky cookie banner rules by inserting a provision into the GDPR that would give website and app owners more legal grounds to justify tracking users beyond simply obtaining their consent.
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It's that time of year again—temperatures are dropping, leaves are changing color, and Microsoft is gradually rolling out another major yearly update to Windows 11.
The Windows 11 25H2 update is relatively minor compared to last year's 24H2 update
[...]
The 24H2 update came with some major under-the-hood overhauls of core Windows components and significant performance improvements for the Arm version; 25H2 is largely 24H2, but with a rolled-over version number to keep it in line with Microsoft's timeline for security updates and tech support.
[...]
To keep things current, we've combed through our Windows cleanup guide, updating it for the current build of Windows 11 25H2 (26200.7019) to help anyone who needs a fresh Windows install or who is finally updating from Windows 10 now that Microsoft is winding down support for it.
[...]
As before, this is not a guide about creating an extremely stripped-down, telemetry-free version of Windows; we stick to the things that Microsoft officially supports turning off and removing. There are plenty of experimental hacks and scripts that take it a few steps farther, and/or automate some of the steps we outline here—NTDev's Tiny11 project is one—but removing built-in Windows components can cause unexpected compatibility and security problems, and Tiny11 has historically had issues with basic table-stakes stuff like "installing security updates."
[...]
The most contentious part of Windows 11's setup process relative to earlier Windows versions is that it mandates a Microsoft account sign-in, with none of the readily apparent "limited account" fallbacks that existed in Windows 10. As of Windows 11 22H2, that's true of both the Home and Pro editions.
[...]
During Windows 11 Setup, after selecting a language and keyboard layout but before connecting to a network, hit Shift+F10 to open the command prompt (depending on your keyboard, you may also need to hit the Fn key before pressing F10). Type OOBE\BYPASSNRO, hit Enter, and wait for the PC to reboot.When it comes back, click "I don't have Internet" on the network setup screen, and you'll have recovered the option to use "limited setup" (aka a local account) again, like older versions of Windows 10 and 11 offered.
This option has been removed from some Windows 11 testing builds, but it still works as of this writing in 25H2. We may see this option removed in a future update to Windows.
[...]
Rather than tell you what I remove, I'll tell you everything that can be removed from the Installed Apps section of the Settings app (also quickly accessible by right-clicking the Start button in the taskbar). You can make your own decisions here; I generally leave the in-box versions of classic Windows apps like Sound Recorder and Calculator while removing things I don't use, like To Do or Clipchamp.
[...]
Microsoft has been on a yearslong crusade against unused space in the Start menu and taskbar, which means there's plenty here to turn off.
[...]
Microsoft has steadily been adding image and text generation capabilities to some of the bedrock in-box Windows apps, from Paint and Photos to Notepad.
Exactly which AI features you're offered will depend on whether you've signed in with a Microsoft account or not or whether you're using a Copilot+ PC with access to more AI features that are executed locally on your PC rather than in the cloud (more on those in a minute).
But the short version is that it's usually not possible to turn off or remove these AI features without uninstalling the entire app. Apps like Notepad and Edge do have toggles for shutting off Copilot and other related features, but no such toggles exist in Paint, for example.
Even if you can find some Registry key or another backdoor way to shut these things off, there's no guarantee the settings will stick as these apps are updated; it's probably easier to just try to ignore any AI features within these apps that you don't plan to use.
[...]
One Copilot+ feature that can be fully removed, in part because of the backlash it initially caused, is the data-scraping Recall feature. Recall won't be enabled on your Copilot+ system unless you're signed in with a Microsoft account and you explicitly opt in. But if fully removing the feature gives you extra peace of mind, then by all means, remove it.
[...]
Apps like Paint or Photos may also prompt you to install an extension for AI-powered image generation from the Microsoft Store. This extension—which weighs in at well over a gigabyte as of this writing—is not installed by default. If you have installed it, you can remove it by opening Settings > Apps > Installed apps and removing "ImageCreationHostApp."
[...]
The main problem with Edge on a new install of Windows is that even more than Windows, it exists in a universe where no one would ever want to switch search engines or shut off any of Microsoft's "value-added features" except by accident. Case in point: Signing in with a Microsoft account will happily sync your bookmarks, extensions, and many kinds of personal data. But many settings for search engine changes or for opting out of Microsoft services do not sync between systems and require a fresh setup each time.
[...]
The most time-consuming part of installing a fresh, direct-from-Microsoft copy of Windows XP or Windows 7 was usually reinstalling all the apps you wanted to run on your PC, from your preferred browser to Office, Adobe Reader, Photoshop, and the VLC player. You still need to do all of that in a new Windows 11 installation. But now more than ever, most people will want to go through the OS and turn off a bunch of stuff to make the day-to-day experience of using the operating system less annoying.
[...]
The settings changes we've recommended here may not fix everything, but they can at least give you some peace, shoving Microsoft into the background and allowing you to do what you want with your PC without as much hassle. Ideally, Microsoft would insist on respectful, user-friendly defaults itself. But until that happens, these changes are the best you can do.
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