It’s Call of Duty day, the annual event when we drop everything to install a mammoth 180 GB download and then play the same game all over again. The post Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 Arrives appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Ask any tech reviewer which iPhone to get, and they’ll all say the base iPhone 17. So why aren’t they using one then? The post Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max Preview appeared first on Thurrott.com.

OpenAI has started testing a new group chat feature in ChatGPT that lets multiple users collaborate in the same conversation. The post ChatGPT Now Supports Group Chats in Select Markets appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Happy Friday! It’s our last weekend in Mexico for the year, so let’s get it kicked off a bit early with some great reader questions. 💥 A post apocalyptic wasteland train_wreck asks: The forum post about the massive datacenter/power construction in the name of more and more AI made me think about whether all of this buildout will be, at least in the near term, a waste. DeepSeek already showed that models can be trimmed to be more efficient, as is naturally the case in the progression of tech. Is this rush to stand up infrastructure just another part of the AI bubble, and in 5 or 10 years will we end up with a lot of grossly underused computer warehouses? Will it be perhaps like the "dark fiber" initiatives of the 2000's bubble, where eventually, years later, there will be a newfound use for these sites? Over the summer, we were discussing AI datacenters on Windows Weekly. Because I live in Pennsylvania, which is a shipping nexus for the northeast U.S. dating back to the days of dirt roads and canals, I’ve seen the impact of (mostly Amazon) warehouses springing up everywhere in our area. Farming has been declining in PA for many years, but for the most part, these spaces were transitioned into homes in the past. Now they’re all becoming warehouses, with giant trucks suddenly clogging what used to be bucolic country lanes, increased traffic everywhere, and declining road quality. These warehouses probably seemed like easy money to the townships that OKed their construction. There were these big farms taking up a lot of space and paying whatever taxes. And now there are these big warehouses taking up that space but also ruining our roads and quality of life, and the tax payoff or whatever it is these communities thought they would get never materialized. Trucks drive in, trucks drive out. Trucks, trucks, trucks, everywhere. So what could be worse than an Amazon warehouse? How about an Amazon datacenter? After that episode, someone from a different part of PA emailed me to say he had heard our discussion, which included another bit described below, and he had decided to fight an effort to bring a datacenter into his community. There were all the usual meetings, with whatever this company was making its case. And he and his son both showed up at each in turn, trying to prevent the datacenter from coming there. In the end, to my surprise, they won: Through pushback from citizens, the township decided that a datacenter wasn’t right for the community. Which is the correct way to view this. Datacenters and communities don’t mix. The discussion we had had on Windows Weekly was basically that these massive facilities were being built all over the world to meet the supposed needs of AI. And that these needs would be temporary, and thanks to technological improvements, as demonstrated nicely by DeepSeek, this capacity would not be needed in the future. And so these datacenters will go up quickly, drain all the electric... The post Ask Paul: November 14 appeared first on Thurrott.com.

On this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad shows his app, Paul shows his download, and we call it a week. The post First Ring Daily 1870: Connection Speed appeared first on Thurrott.com.

On this episode of First Ring Daily, Brad shows his app, Paul shows his download, and we call it a week. Check out Connection Explorer -

Fortnite is dropping its Epic Games Store exclusivity and will be coming to the Xbox app on PC on November 18, with Xbox Play Anywhere support. The post Fortnite is Coming to the Xbox App on PC With Xbox Play Anywhere Support appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss Patch Tuesday, Windows 11, Microsoft accountability, AI superintelligence, .NET, Xbox, and much more. The post Windows Weekly 958: Personal Turkey appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Meta will soon enable messaging interoperability in WhatsApp for EU users. BirdyChat and Haiket are the first third-party messaging apps that will be supported. The post WhatsApp to Enable Messaging Interoperability With Two Other Apps in the EU appeared first on Thurrott.com.

From waterproof sneakers to portable chargers to seat cushions, these are the travel essentials I take with me on every trip. They all make great gifts.

Windows 11 just got its most noticeable Start menu revamp in a while, but is it a productivity boost or just more Microsoft meddling? The team digs into Patch Tuesday’s big

I still don’t understand how she did it, but in the two weeks of time we had between our trip to Berlin in early September and our trip to Mexico City (and, from there, onto Hawaii) in mid-September, my wife Stephanie somehow orchestrated the purchase of the condo we’ve been living in, in Pennsylvania, for almost two years now. “Herding cats” doesn’t even begin to describe the effort, which involved corralling my three sisters (two in PA, one in Arizona, all three of whom have power of attorney over their mother, the now-previous owner) and representatives of local mortgage and title companies, plus an in-person signing that (thankfully) only one of my sisters had to attend. And if this wasn’t essentially an in-family sale, it could never have happened when it did, as the check that paid my sister’s mother wasn’t even ready until after we had signed all the papers. This sale came about, oddly enough, this past spring when it occurred to me that, barring any unforeseen events, we would spend more time in Mexico in 2025 than we would in the United States. Commenting on this to Steph in my own joking way, I noted that since we were crossing that milestone, we should obviously buy a place in Pennsylvania, instead of renting as we’d done for the previous couple of years. It was meant to be funny, in that it didn’t make sense logically. But she surprised me by saying that she was thinking the same thing. And here we are. Our places in Mexico City and PA share several commonalities, the most obvious being that both represent considerable downsizes from our last house. (Indeed, both places added together are smaller than that house.) But to me, the nicest commonality is that we have neighbors in both places that we explicitly rely on. This is important because we are gone from either place for months at a time. We have security systems in both places, and we only use the one in PA when we’re not there. But it’s really our neighbors who make what we do possible. In PA, our next-door neighbor collects our mail and whatever packages as needed. We obviously stop mail delivery when we can, but the time frame on that has gone down. And some packages are outside our control as we get certain things on whatever schedules, and it’s not always obvious. But our neighbor is there, monitoring the neighborhood, as she does, and God love her. And when a UPS or FedEx truck or whatever shows up, she’s on it. Last year, I wrote about the bizarrely agonizing day that UPS delivered the iPhone 16 Pro Max in iPhone Day (Premium): We were planning to drive up to Rochester to visit our son, the phone was supposed to arrive in the afternoon, and, well, things went south. The schedules for UPS and other deliveries are very much based on whatever routes you happen to be on, and for things like new iPhones, there’s nothing you can do about it. When we were in the house in PA, our deliveries always came early in the day, which was ... The post From the Editor’s Desk: Good Decisions, Less Good Decisions ⭐ appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Netflix is launching today a new collection of social party games on TV and the web that can be played using a smartphone as a controller. The post Netflix Launches New Party Games on TV appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Tesla is reportedly planning to make its vehicles compatible with CarPlay, Apple’s iPhone mirroring system that most modern vehicles now support. The post Tesla is Reporting Planning to Add Apple CarPlay Support to its Vehicles appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Anyone running Windows 11 version 25H2 can test the full screen experience that debuted on the Xbox Ally gaming handhelds. And while this isn’t particularly useful on traditional laptop and desktop PCs, I happen to be reviewing the Lenovo Legion Go 2, which is slated to get this experience officially sometime in 2026. But why wait? Make the full screen experience available to Windows 11 Our friend Mauro Huculak has a nice write-up about enabling this feature, which involves some registry editing and two third-party utilities made by two other friends, Mark Russinovich’s PSTools and Rafael Rivera’s Physpanel. The short version of these instructions goes like so: Ensure you’re running Windows 11 version 25H2 Add (or, in my case, edit) a Registry key Restart the PC Use the psexec utility from PSTools to run Command Prompt with System account privileges, as required for the next step Create a scheduled task that runs physpanel each time the system boots; this utility simulates a gaming handheld (and so it was possibly not required in my case) Restart the PC If you do want to undergo these steps, be sure to use the linked write-up above for all the details. Enable the full screen experience With that done, I opened Settings and navigated to Gaming, which now has a Full screen experience entry in addition to Game Bar, Captures, and Game Mode. Then, in Full screen experience, I chose “Xbox” (the only choice) as the home app and enabled the option “Enter full screen experience on startup.” You can also enable “Show accessibility control hints in Task View,” which displays one-button alternatives to the default button combos, so I did that as well. And then I restarted the Legion Go 2 again so I could see that it correctly boots into the Xbox app instead of the Windows desktop. Which it did. Using the full screen experience The Xbox app has evolved into a nice frontend for gaming activities via a controller-friendly Compact mode and, more recently, compatibility with third-party PC game stores like Steam, Battle.net, Epic Game Store, GOG Galaxy, and Ubisoft Connect. On the Legion, as on the ROG Xbox Ally gaming handhelds, you can fully navigate the system using the integrated (and, in the case of the Legion Go 2, detachable) controllers. The left stick and d-pad can be used to tab between any selected on screen items, you can select those items by pressing (A). It all pretty much works as expected and could almost be described as intuitive. But an on screen menu notes some less obvious choices, too. For example, you can use the (☰) key to access more options (as with a right-click), the (Y) button to search, and the (B) button to go back. The Game Bar, also in controller-friendly Compact mode here, works as before: You can press the (Xbox) button to enable it (or, on the Legion Go 2, whichever button you configured for that) and then tab through each of its ma... The post Hands-On: Windows 11 Full Screen Experience appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Spotify is launching a new Audiobook recap feature in beta on iOS that summarizes the content of an audiobook right up to the point where users stopped listening. The post Spotify Launches Audiobook Recaps on iOS appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Mozilla announced a new opt-in experience for Firefox called AI Window so users can access AI only when they want to. The post Mozilla Announces AI Window for Firefox appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Google will soon require Android apps distributed outside of the Play Store to be registered by verified developers, but the company will still allow "experienced users" to sideload unverified apps. The post Google is Tweaking its Android Developer Verification Requirements to Add New Sideloading Process appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Vivaldi 7.7 is here on the desktop with a major change to how the web browser syncs tabs between devices and several user experience updates. The post Vivaldi 7.7 Arrives with Improved Tab Sync, User Experience Updates appeared first on Thurrott.com.

OpenAI just released two GPT-5.1 AI models with new personality options, and they're rolling out first to paid ChatGPT users. The post OpenAI Releases GPT-5.1 Model With New Personalization Options appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Anthropic said today that it will begin building its own AI infrastructure for the first time. It plans to spend $50 billion on datacenters. The post Anthropic Announces $50 Billion AI Infrastructure Plans appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Valved unveiled today a new Steam controller and two new devices running SteamOS, the new Steam Machine for the living room and the Steam Frame VR headset. The post Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Frame Headset, and Steam Controller appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Apple is launching today a new Digital ID feature in its Wallet app that US users will be able to use for age and identity verification in apps, online, and select stores. The post iPhone Users in the US Can Now Create a Digital ID in Apple Wallet appeared first on Thurrott.com.

Backbone today announced the Backbone Pro Xbox Edition controller, which features a classic green transparent design inspired by Xbox. The post Backbone Pro Xbox Edition is Now Available appeared first on Thurrott.com.