Windows' built-in search has never really clicked for me. It’s often slower than I expect, mixes in results I didn’t ask for, and somehow still struggles to surface the exact file or app I’m thinking about. Over the years, I’ve tried to make peace with it, tweaking settings and changing habits, but I always end up feeling like I’m working around search instead of letting it work for me.

It’s fair to say that there are many people in our community who just love to dunk on Microsoft Windows. It’s an easy win, after all, the dominant player in the PC operating system market has a long history of dunking on free software, and let’s face it, today’s Windows doesn’t offer a good experience. But what might the future hold? [Mason] has an unexpected prediction: that Microsoft will eventually move towards offering a Windows-themed Linux distro instead of a descendant of today’s Windows.

The very idea is sure to cause mirth, but on a little sober reflection, it’s not such a crazy one. Windows 11 is slow and unfriendly, and increasingly it’s losing the position once enjoyed by its ancestors. The desktop (or laptop) PC is no longer the default computing experience, and what to do about that must be a big headache for the Redmond company. Even gaming, once a stronghold for Windows, is being lost to competitors such as Valve’s Steam OS, so it wouldn’t be outlandish for them to wonder whether the old embrace-and-extend strategy could be tried on the Linux desktop.

We do not possess a working crystal ball here at Hackaday, so we’ll hold off hailing a Microsoft desktop Linux. But we have to admit it’s not an impossible future, having seen Apple reinvent their OS in the past using BSD, and even Microsoft bring out a cloud Linux distro. If you can’t wait, you’ll have to make do with a Windows skin, WINE, and the .NET runtime on your current Linux box.

Mention the INDIRECT function in an Excel forum and you'll start a fight. It's volatile, meaning it's always awake and recalculating, which can turn a fast spreadsheet into a sluggish mess. But used correctly, it's a power user's secret weapon for building dynamic, reactive dashboards.

Mercor’s APEX-Agents benchmark finds top AI models score under 25% accuracy on realistic consulting, legal, and finance tasks.

The post New study shows AI isn’t ready for office work appeared first on Digital Trends.

Early Friday "there were nearly 113 incidents of people reporting issues with Microsoft 365 as of 1:05 a.m. ET," reports Reuters. But that's down "from over 15,890 reports at its peak a day earlier, according to Downdetector." Reuters points out the outage affected antivirus software Microsoft Defender and data governance software Microsoft Purview, while CRN notes it also impacted "a number of Microsoft 365 services" including Outlook and Exchange online: During the outage, Outlook users received a "451 4.3.2 temporary server issue" error message when attempting to send or receive email. Users did not have the ability to send and receive email through Exchange Online, including notification emails from Microsoft Viva Engage, according to the vendor. Other issues that cropped up include an inability to send and receive subscription email through [analytics platform] Microsoft Fabric, collect message traces, search within SharePoint online and Microsoft OneDrive and create chats, meetings, teams, channels or add members in Microsoft Teams... As with past cloud outages with other vendors, even after Microsoft fixed the issues, recovery efforts by its users to return to a normal state took additional time... Microsoft confirmed in a post on X [Thursday] at 4:14 p.m. ET that it "restored the affected infrastructure to a (healthy) state" but "further load balancing is required to mitigate impact...." The company reported "residual imbalances across the environment" at 7:02 p.m., "restored access to the affected services" and stable mail flow at 12:33 a.m. Jan. 23. At that time, Microsoft still saw a "small number of remaining affected services" without full service stability. The company declared impact from the event "resolved" at 1:29 p.m. Eastern. Microsoft sent out another X post at 8:20 a.m. asking users experiencing residual issues to try "clearing local DNS caches or temporarily lowering DNS TTL values may help ensure a quicker remediation...." Microsoft said in an admin center update that [Thursday's] outage was "caused by elevated service load resulting from reduced capacity during maintenance for a subset of North America hosted infrastructure." Furthermore, Microsoft noted that during "ongoing efforts to rebalance traffic" it introduced a "targeted load balancing configuration change intended to expedite the recovery process, which incidentally introduced additional traffic imbalances associated with persistent impact for a portion of the affected infrastructure." US itek's David Stinner said it appears that Microsoft did not have enough capacity on its backup system while doing maintenance on its main system. "It looks like the backup system was overloaded, and it brought the system down while they were still doing maintenance on the main system," he said. "That is why it took so many hours to get back up and running. If your primary system is down for maintenance and your backup system fails due to capacity issues, then it is going to take a while to get your primary system back up and running." "This was not Microsoft's first outage of 2026," the article notes, "with the vendor handling access issues with Teams, Outlook and other M365 services on Wednesday, a Copilot issue on Jan. 15 plus an Azure outage earlier in the month..."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

If you are using a Windows PC, your privacy and security are nothing short of a myth, and this incident proves it.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: Newly unsealed court documents reveal the behind-the-scenes history of Microsoft and OpenAI, including a surprise: Amazon Web Services was OpenAI’s original partner. We tell the story behind the story, explaining how it all came to light.

Plus, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella debuts a new AI catchphrase at Davos, startup CEO Dave Clark stirs controversy with his “wildly productive weekend,” Elon Musk talks aliens, and the latest on Seattle-area physical AI startups, including Overland AI and AIM Intelligent Machines.

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

With GeekWire co-founders John Cook and Todd Bishop; edited by Curt Milton.

With Microsoft's long-term vision aiming for Windows to become an agentic OS, you may think about switching away. I don't blame you because it sounds like a horrible idea, and one that I believe will end in disaster—I have three reasons why.

VBA used to be the only way to handle iterative, multistep logic in Microsoft Excel. Not anymore. REDUCE brings the power of functional programming directly into your cells, allowing you to condense complex, messy data into single, clean results.

Microsoft has confirmed a controversial new feature coming to Teams that will automatically reveal employee work locations by detecting which Wi-Fi networks they connect to raising significant concerns about workplace surveillance and hybrid work policies. The feature, documented in Microsoft’s 365 Roadmap and Admin Centre (Message ID MC1081568), will automatically set users’ work location when […]

The post Microsoft Teams to Begin Sharing Employee Location with Employers Based on Wi-Fi Networks appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.

Microsoft has confirmed that it provided BitLocker encryption recovery keys to the FBI following a valid search warrant, marking the first publicly known case of the technology giant sharing encryption keys with law enforcement. The disclosure occurred after federal investigators in Guam requested access to three encrypted laptops believed to contain evidence of fraud in […]

The post Microsoft Shared BitLocker Recovery Keys with the FBI to Unlock Encrypted Laptop Data appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.

Microsoft Defender researchers have exposed a sophisticated adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) phishing campaign targeting energy sector organizations, leveraging SharePoint file-sharing services to bypass traditional email security controls and compromise multiple user accounts. SharePoint Abuse for Initial Access The attack began with a phishing email sent from a compromised trusted vendor’s email address, embedding SharePoint URLs that mimicked […]

The post Researchers Uncover Multi-Stage AiTM Attack Using SharePoint to Bypass Security Controls appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.

Many Excel users abandon the ROWS function because it feels like a technicality they can skip. However, to build a truly functional workbook, you need formulas that adapt to your data dimensions, and the ROWS function is ideal for this. Here are four ways I use it to make my Excel spreadsheet smarter.

Microsoft says uninstall Windows 11 update KB5074109 to fix Outlook Classic hangs, black screens and other stability issues affecting users.

The post Microsoft tells you to uninstall the latest Windows 11 update appeared first on Digital Trends.

The FBI served Microsoft a warrant requesting encryption recovery keys to decrypt the hard drives of people involved in an alleged fraud case in Guam.

Microsoft’s new winapp CLI simplifies Windows app development with one-command setup, faster testing, and easier packaging.

The post Microsoft Launches winapp to Simplify Windows App Development appeared first on TechRepublic.

Microsoft is launching a new security feature designed to protect Teams users from fraudulent external callers impersonating trusted organizations. The Brand Impersonation Protection for Teams Calling will roll out starting mid-February 2026, with general availability expected by late February. The new protection mechanism evaluates inbound calls from external parties to identify signs of brand impersonation […]

The post Microsoft Introduces Brand Impersonation Protection Warning for Teams Calls appeared first on GBHackers Security | #1 Globally Trusted Cyber Security News Platform.

Microsoft’s new winapp CLI simplifies Windows app development with one-command setup, faster testing, and easier packaging.

The post Microsoft Launches winapp to Simplify Windows App Development appeared first on TechRepublic.

Threat actors are leveraging the file-sharing service for payload delivery in AitM phishing and BEC attacks.

The post Phishers Abuse SharePoint in New Campaign Targeting Energy Sector appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Let’s be clear, I could use any OS but, for some reason, I always use Windows. It can be a great operating system, but lots of times it feels like it’s working against me instead of for me. Between privacy and telemetry collection, the constant nudges toward Edge and Bing, and the AI features I never asked for, a fresh Windows install rarely feels clean. Add in the pile of preinstalled apps I’ll never use, and it often feels like I’m undoing Windows before I can even start using it.