Windows 10 Gets A New Lease On Life

A few days ago, Microsoft quietly announced that it will extend support for Windows 10 through 2027, even though the operating system officially reached the end of support on 14 October 2025. Initially, the company had planned to offer just one additional year of updates under its Extended Security Updates (ESU) program, but the new decision gives Windows 10 a longer lifeline.

However, critics and groups like The Restart Project, which helped co-develop the "End of 10" toolkit to support Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11, claimed that Microsoft's move to continue pushing security updates to Windows 10 beyond its end-of-support feels like a last-minute snooze button, which only acts as a band-aid on a bleeding system.

They argued that the move would force up to 400 million working PCs into early retirement, prompting many users to brand it as programmed obsolescence rather than anything else. It also seems like an outright, blatant attempt designed to make users transition to Windows 11.

However, if previous complaints lodged are anything to go by — Microsoft's stringent hardware requirements for the operating system, coupled with arguments of flawed design elements, including unnecessary AI and Copilot integrations, will only widen the digital divide, making the jump even harder.

Currently, users enrolled in Microsoft's Extended Security Updates (ESU) program will continue receiving critical security patches for one additional year, extending coverage beyond the original end-of-support date of 14 October 2025, through 14 October 2026.

As highlighted in the recent poll results, a clear majority of participants (68 percent) indicated they plan to continue running Windows 10 on their devices following Microsoft's support extension. Interestingly, 19 percent of respondents said they have already upgraded to Windows 11, highlighting a smaller but notable shift toward the newer operating system.

Granted, only 321 people voted, so we need to take the results with a pinch of salt.

If you are still running Windows 10 on your PC, you can take advantage of the extended lifeline by enrolling in the ESU program for free by signing in with a Microsoft account, or pay for access via 1,000 Microsoft reward points or US$ 30.

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Australia's Floating Solar Panels Could Address Water Crisis

Australia was reported to be on the edge of a water shortage crisis. Farming represents the biggest drain on the continent in this context, using 70 percent of the country's water supply, though the issue is also compounded by prolonged periods of drought and increased human activity. In the spirit of preserving its water supplies, the country has designed a new kind of floating solar panel that could help.

Called floating photovoltaics (FPV), these solar panels can be found in the country's dams and water reservoirs. Essentially, they form a sort of roof over these bodies of water, trapping evaporation in by covering the water's surface. At the same time, they provide renewable energy to power grids in much the same way that standard solar panels help the environment.

These floating solar panels have the potential to save a lot of water. The dams and reservoirs across Australia see 1,400 gigaliters of water evaporate each year. As reported by Bloomberg, one company developing these panels has claimed these panels can reduce that evaporation by more than half.

In an attempt to save water in the country, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency invested AUS$ 8.5 million in an initiative designed to deploy more floating solar panels across its irrigation farms in 2025.

Wannon Water currently has one of Australia's largest floating solar panel systems, generating over 600,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable electricity each year over Warrnambool's Brierly Basinin southern Victoria.

The 1,260 panels installed in the network capture direct sunlight not just from the sky above but from its reflection on the water's surface below. Since they have been installed, they have helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions by close to 600 tons every year. A similar installation of 644 floating solar panels by Gippsland Water is generating enough kilowatts to power 90 homes per day at peak capacity in the region as well.

What's unique about these floating solar panels is that they don't completely cover the water source like some other strategies designed to reduce evaporation. This is a plus because it avoids triggering algal blooms and keeps the water clean. With so many environmental benefits, floating solar panels are becoming a critical part of not just Au energy plans going forward, but also Germany, California, and other regions.

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Critic Disputes Microsoft's Quantum Computing Claim

There is a new critique in the scientific journal Nature, who is raising fresh questions about Microsoft's claimed quantum computing breakthrough last year. This has now underpinned the company's announcement this month that it will have a working quantum system by 2029.

Quantum computers ‌could solve scientific and cybersecurity problems beyond the reach of conventional machines. They have become a priority for U.S. President Donald Trump's administration, which ‌invested US$ 2 billion in the field and this week set goals for a scientific quantum system by 2028.

Like Big Tech rivals IBM, Alphabet's Google and others, Microsoft is developing its own quantum computer. But while rivals are engineering machines based on better-understood quantum technologies, Microsoft has spent nearly two decades trying to break new scientific ground on a technology it says could help it leapfrog competitors.

In a formal reply to the critique and an interview with Reuters, Microsoft said it stands behind its research and that its quantum program is making practical progress despite any concerns.

Microsoft's scientific effort has drawn skepticism. Two previous Microsoft-backed papers were retracted from Nature, while editors flagged alerts about possible research problems in two others, one ‌in Nature and another in Science.

Microsoft said the previously ⁠retracted papers in Nature were done outside its labs and it did not review the data in them before publication.

The peer-reviewed critique published in Nature on Wednesday by Henry Legg, a lecturer in quantum physics at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, ⁠raises concerns about a fifth paper, published in February 2025, and an associated press announcement. The paper, which is not being retracted, is central to all of Microsoft's subsequent quantum efforts.

Microsoft said publicly last year it had found the Majorana, a long-theorized subatomic particle central to its approach. However, it has not published that discovery in a peer-reviewed journal, such as Nature. The February 2025 Nature paper made a narrower claim: that Microsoft had developed software to identify a minute gap in an otherwise highly conductive ‌wire.

The gap matters because qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, are powerful but fragile, often losing their state within fractions of a second. Microsoft says that finding a stable gap in a conductive wire is part of a process that could create longer-lasting, more useful qubits.

Legg, however, found Microsoft's software "yielded inconsistent and misreported outcomes." He also said a broader dataset Microsoft released but did not include in the paper showed random noise, with no clear evidence of the gap Microsoft claimed to find.

In an interview, Legg compared the effort to finding an image of Jesus in toast by looking through an entire bakery's worth of loaves.

"If you're looking into something ‌which is essentially just random physics, eventually you will find the Jesus in your toast," Legg said.

In its reply in Nature, Microsoft defended its claims and said the software was a "practical tuning tool" to find good places on its chips to place qubits.

Chetan Nayak, who oversees Microsoft's quantum hardware efforts, told Reuters in an interview that the code works well enough that Microsoft regularly ‌uses it to set up chips now carrying out quantum computing operations.

"It's almost like arguing, is flight possible or not? And then you're standing next to an airplane," Nayak said. "Well, why don't you hop in and take a ride?"

Sergey Frolov, a University of Pittsburgh physicist who has also criticized Microsoft's work, said Microsoft lacks the longstanding evidence supporting the approaches taken by rivals such as IBM and Quantinuum that do not rely on the existence of the ‌Majorana.

"Neither Microsoft nor anyone else has laid a foundation where it is clear that these (Majorana-based) advances are plausible, through a series of reliable experiments," Frolov said. "On the contrary, we have a series of papers that keep being challenged at the very basic level, by different people."

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Meta Joining The Prediction App Market

There's a potential competitor in the prediction market space and its Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a development team working on an experimental standalone app, internally called "Arena," through which users would be able to weigh in on the outcomes of sporting events, political contests and other questions, The New York Times reports.

Unlike Kalshi and Polymarket, however, the Meta platform would not involve cash wagers, at least initially. Instead, Arena would employ a points system reminiscent of a video game, according to the article, which cited two unnamed Meta employees.

Meta would leverage its social media platforms to nudge people to its prediction market.

CNBC said news of Zuckerberg's initiative may have caused declines in the market values of DraftKings and the parent of FanDuel, Flutter Entertainment, last 23 June. The sports betting platforms are seen as potentially vulnerable to prediction markets.

Prediction markets — on which people buy or sell contracts based on the predicted outcome of an event — have surged in popularity and generate billions of dollars in transactions. They are increasingly scrutinized, too.

Accusations of insider trading, including politicians betting on their own races, have surfaced.

Kalshi reported former New York Congressman George Santos to federal prosecutors after he said he'd be going to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address in February before betting against his own attendance.

In April, the U.S. Department of Justice said a special operations officer used classified knowledge to net US$ 400,000 on a prediction market that speculated on the future of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro was captured by U.S. forces on 3 January.

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Malware Hides Behind Steam Workshop

One of the best arguments for buying games through Steam is the Steam Workshop. This community hub lets users seamlessly download and install mods for their favorite games. No searching for the right files and the folders they go in; Steam Workshop does all the hard work.

However, since all the content is user-created, sometimes malicious coders upload virus-laden items, and victims are often none the wiser.

Earlier this week, Kaspersky blew the whistle on a new virus that hijacks Steam user accounts. This news came several months after the FBI warned about seven Steam games hiding malware.

According to Kaspersky, hackers are exploiting the sharing features of Steam Workshop's Wallpaper Engine. Unlike your average computer wallpaper, the Wallpaper Engine specializes in animated wallpapers (think the animated backgrounds you can get on your Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5), so there's more space for hackers to hide malicious code.

Kaspersky's analysis indicates that while only "dozens" of these malware-laden wallpapers exist, they are extremely popular — each has been downloaded thousands or tens of thousands of times. While anyone who installs the wallpapers will get infected, currently the people who built them are mostly targeting Chinese players.

How so? The art styles and titles are "tailored specifically to them." 89 percent of all victims hail from China, followed by Russia at 5.5 percent.

As previously stated, the virus is designed to attract people with certain sensibilities. The wallpapers lure victims in with images of women that can be best described as waifu material. And then when downloaded, the virus springs into action.

According to Kaspersky's analysis, once the wallpaper is launched, it installs a backdoor and an executable file that acts as a "game" while also digging for Steam account credentials. Once the executable has what it needs, it sends the data to a server that the hacker owns. From there, they have full control over your account; they can change your password, steal your credit card information, and upload more infested wallpapers under your name. Oh, and they can also hide all of your files behind ransomware and install crypto miner software if they want.

Kaspersky claims the malware is spread in two ways. The first is the most straightforward: Hackers draw from an archive of wallpapers compromised with malicious EXE files, DLLs, and scripts.

However, Kaspersky says some versions of the malware spread by turning victims into unwitting gofers. Basically, the target is tricked into accessing a protected archive containing the malware by entering its password. Although, sometimes the hacker installs a script that does it for them — not all of us are technologically literate enough to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Obviously, the best way to avoid this malware is to stay clear of Steam Workshop's Wallpaper Engine for the time being. If you really need a special wallpaper, use obscure Windows apps such as WinDynamicDesktop or download Van Gogh-inspired wallpapers for your Mac. However, let's assume that you downloaded these wallpapers before reading this article. You're not doomed just yet.

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