The latest KB5074109 update for Windows 11 causes the classic Outlook app to crash and lose emails, and there’s a risk of data loss if PST or OST files are stored on cloud-backed storage! You can read more about it on this Microsoft support page. If classic Outlook crashes due to the issue caused by update KB5074109, you must close the email program via Task Manager and restart it. This may result in sent emails not appearing in the Sent Items folder. Microsoft writes: After installing Windows updates released on or after January 13, 2026 (KB5074109), some applications might become unresponsive or experience unexpected errors when opening files from or saving files to cloud-backed storage, such as OneDrive or Dropbox. For example, in some configurations of Outlook that store PST files on OneDrive, Outlook might become unresponsive and fail to reopen unless its process is terminated in Task Manager, or the system is restarted. In addition, sent emails might not appear in the Sent Items folder, and previously downloaded might be downloaded again. Elsewhere, Microsoft also writes: After Windows updates on January 13, 2026 users with Outlook POP account profiles and profiles with PST files report that Outlook hangs and does not exit properly. This issue may occur for any Outlook profile that has PSTs stored on OneDrive. Symptoms reported include: Outlook hangs and shows “Not Responding.” Inability to reopen Outlook without ending its process in Task Manager or restarting the computer. Emails not appearing in the Sent Items folder despite being sent. Outlook redownloading emails. Affected platforms: Windows 11, version 25H2; Windows 11, version 24H2; Windows 11, version 23H2; Windows 10, version 22H2; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021; Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019 Windows Server 2025; Windows Server, version 23H2; Windows Server 2022; Windows Server 2019 Until a fix is available, please use webmail. The other workarounds may be complicated. Microsoft’s offered workaround According to BleepingComputer, Microsoft has shared the following advice for affected users: If this problem occurs, please contact the application developer to find out about possible alternative methods for accessing the files. For Outlook-specific scenarios, moving the PST files from OneDrive should resolve the issue. Instructions can be found here. In addition, email accounts can still be accessed via webmail, provided this is supported by your email provider. Businesses and IT administrators who need urgent help resolving the issue should contact Microsoft Business Support. Microsoft is working on a patch for the Outlook issue. Until it’s released, you will need to use the workaround described by Microsoft. Update KB5074109 is the first Windows 11 patch of 2026 and it’s already wreaking havoc on many Windows 11 computers. We’ve reported on the issues in this update, including PCs no longer shutting down, black screen crashes, and File Explorer ignoring some settings. Read...

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Despite talk of a deal over Greenland, it will be hard for US allies to return to business as usual, writes the BBC’s diplomatic correspondent. Read...

A Wellington man says his business lost money after its Instagram and Facebook accounts were banned. Read...

I’ve reviewed lots of laptops powered by Intel CPUs over the last year, and I’ve had gripes. The Core Ultra Series 2 generation was a branding mess with its mix of Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake, and Meteor Lake architectures. But at CES 2026, Intel turned a corner. Intel Core Ultra Series 3—codenamed Panther Lake—looks like it’s actually a coherent platform to go toe-to-toe with AMD and Qualcomm. Intel seems to have its swagger back, too. Intel had TSMC manufacture its Lunar Lake CPUs last generation, but Intel is now back to manufacturing its own CPUs again. This year, Intel struck a huge deal with Nvidia and the US government became a large shareholder in its operations. Despite recent struggles, the big chipmaker shouldn’t be written off yet. I didn’t have the opportunity to benchmark any of these new Panther Lake-powered machines at CES, so stay tuned for that once we get our hands on review units. But I’m still impressed—and here’s why. Battery life and performance in one Intel’s Lunar Lake was a strange beast. Made by TSMC instead of Intel, it was Intel’s attempt to jump on board the power-efficient laptop revolution, complete with onboard memory that couldn’t be upgraded, a speedy NPU for running overhyped Copilot+ PC AI features, and a surprisingly capable integrated GPU. Mark Hachman / Foundry But Lunar Lake’s big limitation was multithreaded performance. It came far behind Arrow Lake and even Meteor Lake CPUs in our Cinebench and Handbrake benchmarks. That’s why most laptops I reviewed throughout the year eventually went with Arrow Lake or Meteor Lake chips. Yet, while those offered stronger performance, they sacrificed battery life and also ran hotter than Lunar Lake. With Panther Lake, Intel says we should expect more than 50 percent better multithreaded performance over Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, with 10 percent less power usage than Lunar Lake. Intel also claims that Panther Lake’s performance is similar to Arrow Lake. This time around, it sounds like we’re getting both battery life and solid multithreaded CPU performance in the same hardware package. (Want to dive deeper? Learn more about Panther Lake’s technical details.) New integrated GPUs look impressive Intel has been hard at work on upgrading its integrated graphics over the last few years, and it’s now marketing its new Arc B390 iGPU as being on par with Nvidia’s RTX 4000-series discrete graphics cards. We benchmarked the hardware at CES 2026… and it’s close! With Lunar Lake, Intel delivered seriously impressive integrated Arc graphics—but Lunar Lake wasn’t the place for serious iGPU upgrades. Lunar Lake was focused on battery life and not CPU performance, which meant Intel’s best-performing integrated graphics was paired with a CPU platform that struggled in multithreaded performance. Meteor Lake and Arrow Lake had even worse iGPUs. Benchmarking Intel’s Panther Lake with Cyberpunk 2077.Mark Hachman / Foundry By bringing Intel’s fastest iGPUs together with an even faster CPU, Panther Lake promises to power laptops with impressive gaming performance on integrated graphics. That’s something a few PC manufacturers were eager to tell me about at CES 2026. Intel’s new Core Ultra Series 3 hardware could power PC gaming experiences without a discrete GPU. Companies like HP were showing off demos of PC games running on Intel’s new iGPUs. Competing with AMD in handhelds With Panther Lake, Intel is talking about bringing more competition to the gaming handheld space. Steam Deck-style handheld gaming PCs largely use AMD processors, and there’s speculation that companies like Valve may release hardware with Arm chips in the future. Intel had so much swagger that one executive even talked smack at CES 2026, accusing AMD of “selling ancient silicon” for handhelds. Intel is promising custom Panther Lake hardware for the gaming handheld market—something that could be seriously impressive, considering how good Intel’s integrated graphics are getting. AMD disagreed (naturally), saying Panther Lake would come with a bunch of baggage and be a bad fit for handhelds. We’ll see who’s right after the hardware is released. I’m just excited to see more competition. NPUs that catch up to Windows 11’s minimum specs While lots of PC manufacturers are still eager to talk about Copilot+ PCs and AI laptops, Microsoft looks like it’s moving on from its NPU obsession. Companies like Dell are shifting away from AI laptops, too. The NPUs Intel has been shipping for the last few years have been far below Microsoft’s minimum specs. After Microsoft announced back in May 2024 that Copilot+ PCs would require an NPU with at least 40 TOPS of performance, Intel has mostly been shipping laptop hardware with 13 TOPS NPUs—far short of Microsoft’s minimum target. Only Lunar Lake and now Panther Lake cleared the floor for Copilot+ PC features. Meanwhile, all Qualcomm Snapdragon X hardware met the minimum, and AMD’s Ryzen AI CPUs delivered solid performance on a traditional x86 platform with the NPU specs Microsoft asked for. Matthew Smith / Foundry It’s been a big black eye for Intel that most Intel CPU-powered laptops still don’t meet Microsoft’s minimums for these hyped AI features, over 18 months after Microsoft’s announcement. The good news? Most PC buyers don’t care much about Copilot+ PC features, and Microsoft now appears to be deemphasizing them. But at least Intel has finally caught up to Microsoft’s minimum specs. Renewed focus on manufacturing process Intel’s choice to outsource Lunar Lake manufacturing to TSMC was a huge shift in its priorities. Up until then, the company had always manufactured its CPUs in its own foundries. Intel even threatened to abandon manufacturing going forward. Back in July 2025, Intel said it would give up on its next-generation 14A manufacturing process if it couldn’t find a customer, and some speculated that Intel could abandon its own chip fabrication processes. The US government took a stake in Intel a few weeks later, and I’ve always wondered if that dire announcement to shareholders was a negotiation move. Intel signaled that its US-based manufacturing business was struggling and soon after landed the federal government as a shareholder. Now, Intel’s CEO said at CES 2026 that it’s very excited about investing in its 14A process. It’s a huge shift from how the company was acting just last summer. Panther Lake is the first product built on Intel’s 18A manufacturing process, and Intel is no longer depending on TSMC. Intel is also abandoning some of the weirder decisions of Lunar Lake. For example, Panther Lake no longer has on-package memory. In a world where RAM is driving up the price of PCs, that’s valuable. Will Intel’s “Core Ultra Series 3” be watered down, too? While Intel is cleaning up its naming a bit, I’m a little concerned about one thing: does “Core Ultra Series 3” mean anything this time around? A year ago, “Core Ultra Series 2” meant “Lunar Lake”… until Intel released a bunch of Arrow Lake and Meteor Lake chips with Core Ultra Series 2 branding, muddying the brand. Now, at CES 2026, everyone seemed to be using “Core Ultra Series 3” as a stand-in for “Panther Lake.” But will Intel once again release older architectures with Core Ultra Series 3 branding in the coming year? Will we get another round of rebranded Meteor Lake chips? Or Lunar Lake chips? If so, “Core Ultra Series 3” might not mean anything. Either way, Intel’s hardware platform feels like it’s getting where it needs to be. The company is combining performance with battery life, delivering serious integrated graphics power, making its own CPUs, and no longer issuing dire warnings that it may abandon its future manufacturing processes. I look forward to reviewing Panther Lake-powered PCs because they sound impressive. More competition is always good for PC users. Read...

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The home entertainment industry awoke Tuesday morning to stunning news: Sony is ceding control of its home entertainment business, including its storied Bravia TV brand, to TCL.  It’s the kind of headline that makes you do a double-take: Sony, giving up on TVs? Well, it’s more complicated than that, but in broad strokes it’s true. As detailed in a joint press release, Sony will spin off its home entertainment division—including soundbars and TVs—into a new joint venture, with TCL controlling 51 percent of the new entity while Sony will retain a 49-percent share.  The deal likely won’t be finalized until late March, with the new joint company expected to open its doors in the April 2027 timeframe, so it will be business as usual for Sony TVs and home entertainment products until then. The agreement is also subject to regulatory approval.  Still, does this mean Sony TVs as we know them will eventually go away? Well, yes and no.   On a surface level, there will still be Sony- and Bravia-branded TVs on sale even after the presumed closure of the deal, with the Sony/TCL press release specifying that both “the globally recognized ‘Sony’ name and ‘Bravia’ name” are “expected” to live on.  And while TCL will be supplying the panels for new Sony TVs, Sony will still be contributing its “high-quality picture and audio technology” — in short, the under-the-hood chips and picture-quality enhancements that give Sony TV sets their signature look.  Beyond the actual display panels, TCL will serve up its global supply chain and industrial facilities, including the “end-to-end” logistics required to efficiently churn out millions of TVs per annum.  So no, Sony’s Bravia name isn’t going anywhere, but it’s conceivably at risk of spreading everywhere, going both up and down the TV market and thus diluting the brand.  Put another way, we’re used to Sony’s “Bravia” brand being a mark of high-end quality. You’ve got your Sony TV sets, then you’ve got your Sony Bravia TVs, including OLED sets and higher-end LCD-based models. If we start seeing 43-inch-plus Bravia TVs in the sub-$300 range, the Bravia brand may cease to mean anything.  To be clear, it’s not certain that’s going to happen, and we should also point out that TCL itself is the maker of some mighty fine TVs.   Early this month, TCL took the wraps off a new SQD (super quantum-dot) TV that it claims will “end” the picture-quality debate between OLED and LED, and we’re eager to see it for ourselves. We’ve also praised TCL’s bargain TVs for being among the best values in the market.  But even with Sony’s continued involvement in the joint venture and TCL’s impressive track record with TVs, we can’t help but wonder about the future of the Bravia brand, and what it will stand for with TCL at the helm. Read...

The AI industry is ridiculous. All you need is a cursory glance to spot utterly bonkers valuations, bizarre circular funding models, and a dearth of viable products and profitability. You don’t need to be an expert to know there’s something off about an industry built around companies promising to spend trillions while barely making billions. I have no insider information, crystal ball, horoscope, or deep AI-powered analytics of the industry to back up my idea that the AI bubble will burst in 2026. But the signs are all there and it seems awfully likely. Here are just a few of the many red flags. The money is concentrated at the top Major tech companies like Nvidia, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Oracle have all seen their stock prices explode over the past few years as they’ve consolidated their AI efforts, pulled in gargantuan amounts of funding based on AI hype, and announced incredible infrastructure projects that have upset almost every industry, from smartphone production to water management. Nvidia They, in turn, are funding a few select data companies. (How do you think companies like ScaleAI grew so big, so fast?) But as for everyone else, they’re not doing so good. Indeed, if it weren’t for the big tech companies, the US economy would almost certainly be in a recession right now, according to Deutsche Bank research. That might be OK if these companies were developing something genuinely innovative, profitable, and/or showing real potential to deliver on their investments. But the biggest reason for their sky-high valuations is simple: they’re all just investing in each other. Circular investments don’t go anywhere When Oracle announced its $300 billion Stargate Project with OpenAI, Nvidia was set to be the major hardware supplier. Nvidia also invested $100 billion of its own in OpenAI, and Nvidia is also a major investor in CoreWeave (another Oracle supplier). CoreWeave works closely with Microsoft, which is itself a major OpenAI investor. Microsoft and Nvidia have also invested in OpenAI rival Anthropic, which has done major infrastructure deals with Amazon and Google. JarTee / Shutterstock.com The list goes on. And while these enormous investments might have sent company valuations skyward, many of them are based on multi-year plans with estimates for future hardware delivery and assumptions around costs and scalability. For it all to succeed, it’s got to be done before whatever AI bubble there is bursts. In totality, these investments are completely unprecedented, too. By 2030, McKinsey estimates that AI investment could reach almost $7 trillion. For comparison, the entire Manhattan Project cost only $30 billion (adjusted for inflation). Yikes. Companies aren’t making more money Nvidia might be making a killing on AI as the seller of GPU-shaped shovels in this proverbial gold rush, but everyone else is struggling. Microsoft has revised AI sales targets due to poor uptake of its paid-for services, and OpenAI has churned through over $150 billion in investment dollars just to make $15 billion or so in revenue in 2025. If OpenAI can’t figure out how to turn a profit with the backing of all its AI friends, with close to a billion active users, and with the most dominant mindshare in the AI chatbot space, who else will? Mariia Shalabaieva / Unsplash For institutionalized tech companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft—the ones with diversified businesses, long-tail revenue options, and expansive cash stockpiles—this may not be a problem in the short or medium terms. But even major companies can’t burn through money forever. Microsoft and many others have enacted huge layoffs over the past year to help maintain healthier balance sheets, and investors are going to come calling for their returns sooner or later. Smaller AI companies will be affected first, but as we saw with Meta’s disastrously unprofitable endeavors to develop the Metaverse, even massive tech companies can run dry on interest and momentum. What happens then to the trillions in AI investment? Local AI is getting much better From Nvidia’s DGI Spark system to home hackers running large language models on their gaming GPUs, it’s easier than ever to run local AI on your own machine. They aren’t the top models with their trillions of parameters, mind you, but the latest large language models designed for home hardware are becoming increasingly capable. Mark Hachman / IDG OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and others would love a future where you run all your AI services through their cloud platforms that are gated with subscription fees, but the latest local LLMs are capable enough to handle basic text generation, editing, summarizing, and image generation. With the added benefits of improved privacy, security, and response time for local LLMs, more and more individuals and companies are going to pivot this way in the months and years to come. That’s not going to do any favors for AI companies seeking profitability. It’s already outlasted most tech bubbles This one might be more of a meta point on economic bubbles than a specific point for the AI industry, but massive market rallies only tend to last a few years. Yahoo Finance highlights how the dot-com bubble lasted just over two years, the Japanese stock bubble of the 1980s lasted three years, and the big tech-disrupted rally after COVID just under a year. In each of these cases, their respective stock markets saw enormous growth of several hundred percent in just a few years. The AI boom hasn’t quite managed that—it has experienced a gain of around 130 percent over the past three years—but three years is already longer than most of these historic booms. If AI is a bubble that’s going to bust, then it’s almost past due going by historic trends. AI has a power problem All the major AI companies have announced their deals and are starting to make them reality. We aren’t going to see new rounds of trillion-dollar deals from even the major tech firms, as even they have limits on the capital they have available to them. But scaling up to these grandiose goals of AI data centers all over the world is proving difficult. After buying up all the GPUs and memory they can, some of these companies are still struggling to bring them online. ProEnergy Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in November that the company now had a power problem, meaning it had GPUs that couldn’t physically plug in because it lacked the power to run them. And then you have Elon Musk’s xAI trying to import a power station (no, really) and supersonic jet company Boom Supersonic converting its jet engines into gas generators (no, really!). AI needs power, but power is at a premium. Power stations and their associated grid infrastructures take years or even decades to build. When power supply fails to catch up to their ambitions, it’s going to slam the brakes on expansion. A slowdown like that is the last thing the AI industry needs to keep its hype train rolling. Consumer AI fatigue is very real No one likes Grok’s deepfakes and child exploitation images. Fake frames in Nvidia-run games are making gamers feel like they’re not really playing their games. AI-driven memory shortages and associated price spikes for everyday tech products are driving people crazy. Dell Companies are noticing and already pivoting, too. The most stark example so far this year is Dell relaunching its XPS brand at CES 2026. Sure, it’s still a “Copilot+ PC,” but you’d never know it from the marketing. AI is gone from the forefront and back is the focus on longevity, everyday performance, and lightweight design—you know, the things that consumers actually care about. If no one’s even interested in buying AI, how are these companies ever going to make it profitable? That’s not something investors are going to want to see or hear this year. Global trade issues could derail everything On top of all the internal AI industry factors that could bring about its fall, there’s also global instability that could just as likely to deal a death blow. The US administration’s volatile leadership keeps throwing up (and tearing down) trade barriers. Hardware nationalization and nationalism are driving secular investments rather than global branch-outs. TSMC And as the superpowers keep eyeing up what their neighbors have, there’s the risk of war stalling out the world economy. Just China closing off Taiwan’s access to global markets would be enough to collapse just about everything in the tech sphere. Hopefully nothing like that comes to pass, but the prospect of it is one more Sword of Damocles hanging over the AI industry. Even if it bursts, Nvidia will keep pushing Google, Amazon, and Microsoft won’t collapse. OpenAI probably won’t collapse. But the AI hype train of today could be heavily derailed. The smaller and medium AI companies, and all the firms promising agentic revolutions for your business? They’ll be gone. Stock prices will collapse, and global recession could be the medium-term fallout that eventually corrects everything back to some semblance of normalcy. Long term, though, even the companies that remain will have to contend with hardware deprecation that’ll see them scurrying back to Nvidia every 2 to 3 years. Even with all that hardware power, none of these companies are going to reach AGI (or even super-intelligence) with large language models that can’t functionally understand anything. AI is here to stay, but the industry as it is can’t last much longer. The signs are there that 2026 could be the year it all changes—again. Read...

Four in five Australian organisations say they struggle to prove AI delivers business value, blaming poor data access and weak integration. Read...

The Ifab`s annual business meeting in London will discuss changes to the laws for the Fifa World Cup and domestic leagues. Read...