An AI language model like the kind that powers ChatGPT is a gigantic statistical web of data relationships. You give it a prompt (such as a question), and it provides a response that is statistically related and hopefully helpful. At first, ChatGPT was a tech amusement, but now hundreds of millions of people are relying on this statistical process to guide them through life’s challenges. It’s the first time in history that large numbers of people have begun to confide their feelings to a talking machine, and mitigating the potential harm the systems can cause has been an ongoing challenge.

On Monday, OpenAI released data estimating that 0.15 percent of ChatGPT’s active users in a given week have conversations that include explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent. It’s a tiny fraction of the overall user base, but with more than 800 million weekly active users, that translates to over a million people each week, reports TechCrunch.

OpenAI also estimates that a similar percentage of users show heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT, and that hundreds of thousands of people show signs of psychosis or mania in their weekly conversations with the chatbot.

OpenAI shared the information as part of an announcement about recent efforts to improve how its AI models respond to users with mental health issues. “We’ve taught the model to better recognize distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward professional care when appropriate,” OpenAI writes.

The company claims its new work on ChatGPT involved consulting with more than 170 mental health experts and that these clinicians observed the latest version of ChatGPT “responds more appropriately and consistently than earlier versions.”

Properly handling inputs from vulnerable users in ChatGPT has become an existential issue for OpenAI. Researchers have previously found that chatbots can lead some users down delusional rabbit holes, largely by reinforcing misleading or potentially dangerous beliefs through sycophantic behavior, where chatbots excessively agree with users and provide flattery rather than honest feedback.

The company is currently being sued by the parents of a 16-year-old boy who confided his suicidal thoughts to ChatGPT in the weeks leading up to his suicide. In the wake of that lawsuit, a group of 45 state attorneys general (including those from California and Delaware, which could block the company’s planned restructuring), warned OpenAI that it needs to protect young people who use their products.

Earlier this month, the company unveiled a wellness council to address these concerns, though critics noted the council did not include a suicide prevention expert. OpenAI also recently rolled out controls for parents of children who use ChatGPT. The company says it’s building an age prediction system to automatically detect children using ChatGPT and impose a stricter set of age-related safeguards.

Rare but impactful conversations

The data shared on Monday appears to be part of the company’s effort to demonstrate progress on these issues, although it also shines a spotlight on just how deeply AI chatbots may be affecting the health of the public at large.

In a blog post on the recently released data, OpenAI says these types of conversations in ChatGPT that might trigger concerns about “psychosis, mania, or suicidal thinking” are “extremely rare,” and thus difficult to measure. The company estimates that around 0.07 percent of users active in a given week and 0.01 percent of messages indicate possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania. For emotional attachment, the company estimates around 0.15 percent of users active in a given week and 0.03 percent of messages indicate potentially heightened levels of emotional attachment to ChatGPT.

OpenAI also claims that on an evaluation of over 1,000 challenging mental health-related conversations, the new GPT-5 model was 92 percent compliant with its desired behaviors, compared to 27 percent for a previous GPT-5 model released on August 15. The company also says its latest version of GPT-5 holds up to OpenAI’s safeguards better in long conversations. OpenAI has previously admitted that its safeguards are less effective during extended conversations.

In addition, OpenAI says it’s adding new evaluations to attempt to measure some of the most serious mental health issues facing ChatGPT users. The company says its baseline safety testing for its AI language models will now include benchmarks for emotional reliance and non-suicidal mental health emergencies.

Despite the ongoing mental health concerns, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on October 14 that the company will allow verified adult users to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT starting in December. The company had loosened ChatGPT content restrictions in February but then dramatically tightened them after the August lawsuit. Altman explained that OpenAI had made ChatGPT “pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues” but acknowledged this approach made the chatbot “less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.”

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in distress, please call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline number, 1-800-273-TALK (8255), which will put you in touch with a local crisis center.

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After kicking off an unpopular pilot test last month, Samsung made the practice of having its expensive smart fridges display ads official this week.

The ads will be shown on Samsung’s 2024 Family Hub smart fridges. As of this writing, Samsung’s Family Hub fridges have MSRPs ranging from $1,899 to $3,499. The ads will arrive through a software update that Samsung will start issuing this month and display on the fridge’s integrated 21.5- or 32-inch (depending on the model) screen. The ads will show when the fridges are idle and display what Samsung calls Cover Screens.

As part of the Family Hub software update, we are piloting a new widget for select Cover Screens themes of Family Hub refrigerators. The widget will display useful day-to-day information such as news, calendar and weather forecasts, along with curated advertisements.

Samsung also said that its fridges will only show contextualized ads, instead of personalized ads, which rely on collecting data on users.

The Verge reported that the widget will appear as a rectangular box at the bottom of the screens. The box will change what it displays “every 10 seconds,” the publication said.

The software update will also introduce “a Daily Board theme that offers a new way to see useful information at a glance,” Samsung said. The Verge reported that this feature will also include ads, something that Samsung’s announcement neglected to state. The Daily Board theme will show five tiles with information such as appointments and the weather, and one with ads.

The ads experience, though, seems to have improved somewhat from the earlier pilot testing in that users can use their fridge’s settings menu to opt out of seeing ads. If users set their Cover Screen to show integrated Art or Album themes, then the display won’t show ads. But doing this would prevent users from taking advantage of the new widget’s helpful features.

Samsung fridge owners can also opt to avoid the latest software update altogether. However, they would miss out on other features included in the software update, such as a UI refresh and the ability for the internal camera inside some fridges to identify more fruits and vegetables inside the fridge.

The changes are part of a frustrating trend among smart home products to change the user experience in unwanted ways after people have already made their purchases. It also shows Samsung’s growing reliance on ads with its smart home products, even after downplaying the idea that that would happen. As the companies behind smart home products look for new ways to grow revenue, deliver new features, and build demand beyond selling expensive hardware that people rarely buy, customers are increasingly bearing the brunt, which, in many cases, includes dealing with more ads.

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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 “25” here is a reference to the year the update was released, while the “H2” denotes that it was released in the second half of the year, a vestigial suffix from when Microsoft would release two major Windows updates per year). 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.

But Microsoft’s continuous update cadence for Windows 11 means that even the 24H2 version as it currently exists isn’t the same one Microsoft released a year ago.

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. We’ll outline dozens of individual steps you can take to clean up a “clean install” of Windows 11, which has taken an especially user-hostile attitude toward advertising and forcing the use of other Microsoft products.

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.”

These guides capture moments in time, and regular monthly Windows patches, app updates downloaded through the Microsoft Store, and other factors all can and will cause small variations from our directions. You may also see apps or drivers specific to your PC’s manufacturer. This guide also doesn’t cover the additional bloatware that may come out of the box with a new PC, starting instead with a freshly installed copy of Windows from a USB drive.

Starting with Setup: Avoiding Microsoft account sign-in

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.

There are two reasons I can think of not to sign in with a Microsoft account. The first is that you want nothing to do with a Microsoft account, thank you very much. Signing in makes Windows bombard you with more Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Game Pass subscription upsells since all you need to do is add them to an account that already exists, and Windows setup will offer subscriptions to each if you sign in first.

The second—which describes my situation—is that you do use a Microsoft account because it offers some handy benefits like automated encryption of your local drive (having those encryption keys tied to my account has saved me a couple of times) or syncing of browser info and some preferences. But you don’t want to sign in at setup, either because you don’t want to be bothered with the extra upsells or you prefer your user folder to be located at “C:\Users\Andrew” rather than “C:\Users\.”

Regardless of your reasoning, if you don’t want to bother with sign-in at setup, you have a few different options:

Use the command line

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.

For Windows 11 Pro

For Windows 11 Pro users, there’s a command-line-free workaround you can take advantage of.

Proceed through the Windows 11 setup as you normally would, including connecting to a network and allowing the system to check for updates. Eventually, you’ll be asked whether you’re setting your PC up for personal use or for “work or school.”

Select the “work or school” option, then “sign-in options,” at which point you’ll finally be given a button that says “domain join instead.” Click this to indicate you’re planning to join the PC to a corporate domain (even though you aren’t), and you’ll see the normal workflow for creating a “limited” local account.

The downside is that you’re starting your relationship with your new Windows install by lying to it. But hey, if you’re using the AI features, your computer is probably going to lie to you, too. It all balances out.

Using the Rufus tool

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Rufus tool can streamline a few of the more popular tweaks and workarounds for Windows 11 install media. Rufus is a venerable open source app for creating bootable USB media for both Windows and Linux. If you find yourself doing a lot of Windows 11 installs and don’t want to deal with Microsoft accounts, Rufus lets you tweak the install media itself so that the “limited setup” options always appear, no matter which edition of Windows you’re using.

To start, grab Rufus and then a fresh Windows 11 ISO file from Microsoft. You’ll also want an 8GB or larger USB drive; I’d recommend a 16GB or larger drive that supports USB 3.0 speeds, both to make things go a little faster and to leave yourself extra room for drivers, app installers, and anything else you might want to set a new PC up for the first time. (I also like this SanDisk drive that has a USB-C connector on one end and a USB-A connector on the other to ensure compatibility with all kinds of PCs.)

Fire up Rufus, select your USB drive and the Windows ISO, and hit Start to copy over all of the Windows files. After you hit Start, you’ll be asked if you want to disable some system requirements checks, remove the Microsoft account requirement, or turn off all the data collection settings that Windows asks you about the first time you set it up. What you do here is up to you; I usually turn off the sign-in requirement, but disabling the Secure Boot and TPM checks doesn’t stop those features from working once Windows is installed and running.

The rest of Windows 11 setup

The main thing I do here, other than declining any and all Microsoft 365 or Game Pass offers, is turn all the toggles on the privacy settings screen to “no.” This covers location services, the Find My Device feature, and four toggles that collectively send a small pile of usage and browsing data to Microsoft that it uses “to enhance your Microsoft experiences.” Pro tip: Use the Tab key and spacebar to quickly toggle these without clicking or scrolling.

Of these, I can imagine enabling Find My Device if you’re worried about theft or location services if you want Windows and apps to be able to access your location. But I tend not to send any extra telemetry or browsing data other than the basics (the only exception being on machines I enroll in the Windows Insider Preview program for testing, since Microsoft requires you to send more detailed usage data from those machines to help it test its beta software). If you want to change any of these settings after setup, they’re all in the Settings app under Privacy & Security.

If you have signed in with a Microsoft account during setup, you can expect to see several additional setup screens that aren’t offered when you’re signing in with a local account, including attempts to sell Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. Accept or decline these offers as desired.

Cleaning up Windows 11

Reboot once this is done, and you’ll be at the Windows desktop. Start by installing any drivers you need, plus Windows updates.

When you first connect to the Internet, Windows may or may not decide to automatically pull down a few extraneous third-party apps and app shortcuts, things like Spotify or Grammarly—this has happened to me consistently in most Windows 11 installs I’ve done over the years, though it hasn’t generally happened on the 24H2 and 25H2 PCs I’ve set up.

Open the Start menu and right-click each of the apps you don’t want to remove the icons for and/or uninstall. Some of these third-party apps are just stubs that won’t actually be installed to your computer until you try to run them, so removing them directly from the Start menu will get rid of them entirely.

Right-clicking and uninstalling the unwanted apps that are pinned to the Start menu is the fastest (and, for some, the only) way to get rid of them.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The other apps and services included in a fresh Windows install generally at least have the excuse of being first-party software, though their usefulness will be highly user-specific: Xbox, the new Outlook app, Clipchamp, and LinkedIn are the ones that stand out, plus the ad-driven free-to-play version of the Solitaire suite that replaced the simple built-in version during the Windows 8 era.

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.

This list should be current for a fresh, fully updated install of Windows 11 25H2, at least in the US, but it doesn’t include any apps that might be specific to your hardware, like audio or GPU settings apps. Some individual apps may or may not appear as part of your Windows install.

• Calculator
• Camera
• Clock (may also appear as Windows Clock)
• Copilot
• Family
• Feedback Hub
• Game Assist
• Media Player
• Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Microsoft Clipchamp
• Microsoft OneDrive: Removing this, if you don’t use it, should also get rid of notifications about OneDrive and turning on Windows Backup.
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft To Do
• News
• Notepad
• Outlook for Windows
• Paint
• Photos
• Power Automate
• Quick Assist
• Remote Desktop Connection
• Snipping Tool
• Solitaire & Casual Games
• Sound Recorder
• Sticky Notes
• Terminal
• Weather
• Web Media Extensions
• Xbox
• Xbox Live

In Windows 11 23H2, Microsoft moved almost all of Windows’ non-removable apps to a System Components section, where they can be configured but not removed; this is where things like Phone Link, the Microsoft Store, Dev Home, and the Game Bar have ended up. The exception is Edge and its associated updater and WebView components; these are not removable, but they aren’t listed as “system components” for some reason, either.

Start, Search, Taskbar, and lock screen decluttering

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.

• Right-click an empty space on the desktop, click Personalize, and click any of the other built-in Windows themes to turn off the Windows Spotlight dynamic wallpapers and the “Learn about this picture” icon.
• Right-click the Taskbar and click Taskbar settings. I usually disable the Widgets board; you can leave this if you want to keep the little local weather icon in the lower-left corner of your screen, but this space is also sometimes used to present junky news articles from the Microsoft Start service.
  • If you want to keep Widgets enabled but clean it up a bit, open the Widgets menu, click the Settings gear in the top-right corner, scroll to “Show or hide feeds,” and turn the feed off. This will keep the weather, local sports scores, stocks, and a few other widgets, but it will get rid of the spammy news articles.
• Also in the Taskbar settings, I usually change the Search field to “search icon only” to get rid of the picture in the search field and reduce the amount of space it takes up. Toggle the different settings until you find one you like.

• Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Recommendations & offers and disable “Personalized offers,” “Improve Start and search results,” “Show notifications in Settings,” “Recommendations and offers in Settings,” and “Advertising ID” (some of these may already be turned off). These settings mostly either send data to Microsoft or clutter up the Settings app with various recommendations and ads.
• Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Diagnostics & feedback, scroll down to “Feedback frequency,” and select “Never” to turn off all notifications requesting feedback about various Windows features.
• Open Settings > Privacy & Security, click Search and disable “Show search highlights.” This cleans up the Search menu quite a bit, focusing it on searches you’ve done yourself and locally installed apps.

• Open Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Under “Personalize your lock screen,” switch from “Windows spotlight” to either Picture or Slideshow to use local images for your lock screen, and then uncheck the “get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more” box that appears. This will hide the other text boxes and clickable elements that Windows automatically adds to the lock screen in Spotlight mode. Under “Lock screen status,” select “none” to hide the weather widget and other stocks and news widgets from your lock screen.
• If you own a newer Windows PC with a dedicated Copilot key, you can navigate to Settings > Personalization > Text input and scroll down to remap the key. Unfortunately, its usefulness is still limited—you can reassign it to the Search function or to the built-in Microsoft 365 app, but by default, Windows doesn’t give you the option to reassign it to open any old app.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

By default, the Start menu will occasionally make “helpful” suggestions about third-party Microsoft Store apps to grab. These can and should be turned off.

• Open Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.” This will disable a feature where Microsoft Store apps you haven’t installed can show up in Recommendations along with your other files. You can also decide whether you want to be able to see more pinned apps or more recent/recommended apps and files on the Start menu, depending on what you find more useful.
• On the same page, disable “show account-related notifications” to reduce the number of reminders and upsell notifications you see related to your Microsoft account.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

• Open Settings > System > Notifications, scroll down, and expand the additional settings section. Uncheck all three boxes here, which should get rid of all the “finish setting up your PC” prompts, among other things.
• Also feel free to disable notifications from any specific apps you don’t want to hear from.

In-app AI features

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.

Removing Recall, and other extra steps for Copilot+ PCs

So far, everything we’ve covered has been applicable to any PC that can run Windows 11. But new PCs with the Copilot+ branding—anything with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip in it or things with certain Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI CPUs—get extra features that other Windows 11 PCs don’t have. Given that these are their own unique subclass of PCs, it’s worth exploring what’s included and what can be turned off.

Removing Recall will be possible, though it’s done through a relatively obscure legacy UI rather than the Settings app. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

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.

• If you just want to make sure Recall isn’t active, navigate to Settings > Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots. This is where you adjust Recall’s settings and verify whether it’s turned on or off.
• To fully remove Recall, open Settings > System > Optional Features, scroll down to the bottom of this screen, and click More Windows features. This will open the old “Turn Windows features on or off” Control Panel applet used to turn on or remove some legacy or power-user-centric components, like old versions of the .NET Framework or Hyper-V. It’s arranged alphabetically.
• In Settings > Privacy & security > Click to Do, you’ll also find a toggle to disable Click to Do, a Copilot+ feature that takes a screenshot of your desktop and tries to make recommendations or suggest actions you might perform (copying and pasting text or an image, for example).

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.”

Bonus: Cleaning up Microsoft Edge

I use Edge out of pragmatism rather than love—”the speed, compatibility, and extensions ecosystem of Chrome, backed by the resources of a large company that isn’t Google” is still a decent pitch. But Edge has become steadily less appealing as Microsoft has begun pushing its own services more aggressively and stuffing the browser with AI features. In a vacuum, Firefox aligns better with what I want from a browser, but it just doesn’t respond well to my normal tab-monster habits despite several earnest attempts to switch—things bog down and RAM runs out. I’ve also had mixed experience with the less-prominent Chromium clones, like Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave. So Edge it is, at least for now.

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.

Below are the Edge settings I change to maximize the browser’s usefulness (and usable screen space) while minimizing annoying distractions; it involves turning off most of the stuff Microsoft has added to the Chromium version of Edge since it entered public preview many years ago. Here’s a list of things to tweak, whether you sign in with a Microsoft account or not.

• On the Start page when you first open the browser, hit the Settings gear in the upper-right corner. Turn off “Quick links” (or if you leave them on, turn off “Show sponsored links”) and then turn off “show content.” Whether you leave the custom background or the weather widget is up to you.
• Click the “your privacy choices” link at the bottom of the menu and turn off the “share my data with third parties for personalized ads” toggle.

• In the Edge UI, click the ellipsis icon near the upper-right corner of the screen and click Settings.
• Click Profiles in the left Settings sidebar. Click Microsoft Rewards, and then turn it off.
• Click Privacy, Search, & Services in the Settings sidebar.
  • In Tracking prevention, I set tracking prevention to “strict,” though if you use some other kind of content blocker, this may be redundant; it can also occasionally prompt “it looks like you’re using an ad-blocker” pop-up from sites even if you aren’t.
  • In Privacy, if they’re enabled, disable the toggles under “Optional diagnostic data,” “Help improve Microsoft products,” and “Allow Microsoft to save your browsing activity.”
  • In Search and connected experiences, disable the “Suggest similar sites when a website can’t be found,” “Save time and money with Shopping in Microsoft Edge,” and “Organize your tabs” toggles.
    • If you want to switch from Bing, click “Address bar and search” and switch to your preferred engine, whether that’s Google, DuckDuckGo, or something else. Then click “Search suggestions and filters” and disable “Show me search and site suggestions using my typed characters.”

These settings retain basic spellcheck without any of the AI-related additions. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

• Click Appearance in the left-hand Settings sidebar, and scroll down to Copilot and sidebar
  • Turn the sidebar off, and turn off the “Personalize my top sites in customize sidebar” and “Allow sidebar apps to show notifications” toggles.
  • Click Copilot under App specific settings. Turn off “Show Copilot button on the toolbar.” Then, back in the Copilot and sidebar settings, turn off the “Show sidebar button” toggle that has just appeared.
• Click Languages in the left-hand navigation. Disable “Use Copilot for writing on the web.” Turn off “use text prediction” if you want to prevent things you type from being sent to Microsoft, and switch the spellchecker from Microsoft Editor to Basic. (I don’t actually mind Microsoft Editor, but it’s worth remembering if you’re trying to minimize the amount of data Edge sends back to the company.)

Windows-as-a-nuisance

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.

That’s more relevant now that Microsoft has formally ended support for Windows 10. Yes, Windows 10 users can get an extra year of security updates relatively easily, but many who have been putting off the Windows 11 upgrade will be taking the plunge this year.

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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When did cheap become a dirty word? Why is the association with not wanting or being able to spend a lot shame rather than freedom? There used to be this concept called cheap-and-cheerful, where you weren’t punished at every turn for buying the inexpensive car, the store-brand food, or the white-labelled but funkily-painted white goods. While cheap Western EVs aren’t exactly a new concept, France is about to make them particularly adorable and endearing to own. Extremely official-looking photos of the new Renault Twingo have surfaced online, and while there are a few changes from the concept car, fans of the iconic city car likely won’t be disappointed.

What sort of changes, you ask? For one, the semicircular door handles are just gone, replaced with more standard pull-out handles. It’s a missed opportunity for a bit of charm, but if they’re parts bin handles, the commitment to keeping costs low isn’t going unnoticed. Secondly, the chunky wheel arch trims are gone, replaced with more slender units. Thirdly, there’s been some general production car-ization. The front bumper now sports a real intake for heat exchangers, the side mirrors are larger than on the concept, and you see parking sensors and retroreflectors appear to suit consumer taste and regulation. However, other than those touches, the new Twingo looks pretty much like the concept car we saw just two short years ago.

This means it has the same friendly ’90s-nostalgic face, the same triple hood vents, the same black band around the rear window. Even the lighting’s surprisingly close to what we saw on the show car. On face value, it seems that Renault hasn’t cocked this one up, but did you really expect anything different? The reborn Renault 5 is a masterclass in affordable style and the new Renault 4 manages to be chic and feel well-built without breaking the bank. Sure, the targeted sub-€20,000 price tag means the production Twingo needed some small sacrifices, but on first glance, it hits the visual spot, especially in sunflower yellow.

There’s good news on the inside too, where a big slab of body-color plastic dresses up the dashboard without splurging too much. Molding the Twingo wordmark into the plastic is a great way to break up the surface for essentially free, and joy of joys, there’s proper switchgear. Three knobs for your climate control, a giant hazard warning lamp switch that looks like a boiled sweet, real buttons on the steering wheel, and on the left edge of the dashboard. If Renault can spend the money on physical controls on such an inexpensive car, there’s no excuse for cheap and nasty capacitive touch controls in luxury products, full-stop.

It also doesn’t seem like Renault’s skimped on storage in the new Twingo. There’s a small tray in a half-console sprouting from the dashboard and a far larger one that sits beneath the infotainment screen and the body-color trim panel. Perfect for phones, parking slips, errant lemon sherbets, that sort of stuff. Speaking of infotainment, it’s not a huge surprise to see the family interface here, along with a digital instrument cluster. Welcome to the electric age. I am a bit curious as to what the red thing in the floor console is, but I suppose all will be revealed in due time.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the new Twingo, like what sort of battery pack powers it and what the charging specs are like, but it seems like Renault’s done something impressive here. Not only has it done a reasonably convincing job of molding the pinch-me-cute looks of the original model around a modern form factor, it’s created a cheap electric car that’s actually cheerful. It won’t be long until Renault tells everyone more about its new electric baby, and when that happens, we’ll be here to relay all the details.

Top graphic image: Renault

The post This Is The New Renault Twingo Before You’re Supposed To See It appeared first on The Autopian.

Recalls are often just a normal part of car ownership, but some cars see recalls more frequently than others. Earlier on Friday, the Jeep world got hit with recall 68C. What’s recall 68C? It affects a number of 2020 to 2025 Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrids and 2022 to 2026 model year Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids, and regards unexpected combustion. As the internal communication reveals:

Some of the above vehicles may have been built with a high voltage (HV) battery manufactured with cells which may be susceptible to separator damage. Separator damage, combined with other complex interactions within the cells, may lead to a vehicle fire. A vehicle fire can result in increased risk of occupant injury and injury to persons outside the vehicle.

Well, that’s not good. A separator sits inside a battery between the anode and the cathode, ensuring the two materials don’t contact each other. If it fails, the result would be an internal short circuit, which could lead to thermal runaway. Not every use of the word “thermal” describes a fire, but in this case? Yeah, fire. Although a recall report hasn’t hit the NHTSA website yet, recall 68C has appeared on the Transport Canada website which describes…huh, you aren’t going to believe this.

On certain vehicles, the recall repairs completed by an FCA dealer during recall 95B (Transport Canada recall no. 2024-566) may not be effective. As a result, another repair is required.

On certain vehicles, there could be a problem inside the high-voltage battery that can cause a fire, even while parked with the ignition off.

Yeah, it turns out this is sort of a recall of a recall. The last round of fixes in 2024 didn’t all work and didn’t apply to every affected vehicle, which is especially concerning when one potential result of this problem is a vehicle bursting into flames unattended. But it gets wilder: That recall from last year is also a fix for another recall, as the recall report for last year’s recall states:

• On June 25, 2024, the FCA US LLC (“FCA US”) Technical Safety and Regulatory Compliance (“TSRC”) organization opened an investigation after receiving two reports of fires originating from the high voltage (“HV”) battery in Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (“PHEVs”) outside the scope of FCA US Recall ID B9A (NHTSA ID 23V-787) (“B9A”).

• From April 2024 through July 2024, FCA US received additional reports of fires originating from the HV battery in certain Jeep Wrangler PHEVs and certain Jeep Grand Cherokee PHEVs. FCA US has conducted further analysis of the battery packs from some of these vehicles with Samsung SDI in an effort to determine root cause.

• From June 2024 to July 2024, FCA US received three reports of fires originating in the HV battery in Jeep Wrangler PHEVs which received the B9A remedy software. FCA US has determined the B9A remedy is ineffective at detecting certain abnormalities within the HV battery that may lead to a fire.

Alright, so here’s what happened: Stellantis discovered that some Jeep Wrangler 4xe and Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids were catching fire, so it started remedying the problem by updating the battery monitoring system. That update didn’t work as expected, so it decided to update the battery management systems again, “followed by a HV battery replacement if needed.” However, that now doesn’t seem to have worked as expected either, so Jeep is working on another fix.

So, what are you supposed to do if you own an affected 2020 to 2025 Wrangler 4xe or 2023 to 2025 Grand Cherokee 4xe? Well, in the words of the manufacturer, “To reduce the safety risk, FCA advises not to charge your vehicle, and to park it outdoors and away from other vehicles or structures until the recall repairs have been completed.”

Coming on the back of an over-the-air update that reportedly bricked several Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrids, this latest recall isn’t the sort of thing that inspires confidence, and it’s something that Jeep needs to get right. While NHTSA hasn’t published a full defect report for this latest recall, the last one revealed that multiple reports of fires came in the roughly six months after the initial B9A recall was launched. Needless to say, we’ll be keeping our eye on the situation as it evolves. Given the precedent, this isn’t the end of this story.

Top graphic image: Jeep

The post Jeep Just Recalled A Recall Of Another Recall Because Its Plug-In Hybrids Keep Catching Fire appeared first on The Autopian.

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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday said the state needs to slash spending on Medicaid to prevent the low-income health insurance program from forcing ongoing cuts to virtually every other service the state provides.

Over the last decade Medicaid spending has risen at a rate of 8.8% a year — about double what the state government is allowed to spend under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, according to the governor’s office. As a result, the rest of the state government has steadily shrunk to make room for the rapid growth in health care spending.

If the state doesn’t change course, Polis said, “the increases in Medicaid costs would crowd out essentially everything the state does. We would largely just fund schools and Medicaid — no money for roads, no money for public safety, no money for housing.”

Under the state constitution, the TABOR cap limits public spending to the combined rate of population growth and consumer inflation — averaging about 4.4% since 2015, Polis said. But critics of TABOR have long argued the formula used to calculate the spending cap is a poor match for public agencies, which spend money on things like health care and road construction, the costs of which have long risen faster than other consumer goods.

Polis’ remarks came during a Friday afternoon news conference where he released his budget proposal for the 2026-27 fiscal year, which starts July 1. The governor’s annual spending recommendations are just that — a series of requests to the Joint Budget Committee, which ultimately writes the budget each year, subject to approval by the rest of the General Assembly.

The legislature is expected to face another tight budget year. Lawmakers almost certainly won’t be able to maintain the current levels of government programs and services.

In September, nonpartisan fiscal analysts told the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee that providing the same level of government programs and services next fiscal year is predicted to cost $850 million more than the legislature will have available to spend.

The governor’s plan calls for increasing Medicaid spending next fiscal year by nearly $300 million. That’s less than half of the $631 million increase in projected costs if the state kept its Medicaid offerings the same. About 1.2 million Coloradans are covered by the program, which is funded by a mix of federal and state dollars.

The governor’s office said the savings could come in part from codifying an executive order Polis issued Friday cutting $12 million to $15 million in Medicaid spending this fiscal year, including by capping some reimbursement rates for providers and limiting how much recipients can receive in dental benefits. 

Other Medicaid cost-saving proposals from the governor’s office include limiting home caregiver hours and changing how much is paid to people who supervise people with autism. 

“No one loses their coverage,” the governor said of his plan, though he conceded that his proposal would reduce the benefits Medicaid recipients receive. “There’s two levers on Medicaid. One is how many people you cover and two is what you cover. There have been a number of benefits that have been added in recent years and some of those aren’t sustainable over time.”

Polis pointed specifically to dental benefits under Medicaid. It used to be capped at $1,500 annually. Then the state did away with the cap. Now, Polis wants a cap reinstated, but at $3,000.

In the long term, Polis wants to tie increases in Medicaid spending to the TABOR formula that determines how much government spending can grow by year over year.

“That plan doesn’t have to be accepted by the Joint Budget Committee of the legislature,” Polis said. “But it’s an important exercise to show what sustainability in Medicaid looks like.”

Polis’ plan is unlikely to sit well with legislative Democrats, who control both chambers. Top leaders, including JBC Chair Jeff Bridges and House Speaker Julie McCluskie, have called for changes to the TABOR cap itself. But advocates for amending the constitution are still searching for a proposal that can both win approval from the electorate and pass legal muster.

The governor this year has already slashed some Medicaid spending to balance the budget after congressional Republicans’ federal tax and spending measure, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, blew a roughly $750 million hole in state finances.

In recent years, lawmakers have debated at length how to reduce spending on health care. But efforts to do so have consistently run into the same problem: Health care costs don’t go away if the state stops funding them. They simply get shifted to someone else — either patients or safety net health care providers that are already facing financial problems at today’s spending levels.

Some have already been forced to close in recent years due to rising uncompensated care. And health care administrators expect things to get worse under recent federal changes to Medicaid reimbursements.

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Education

Aside from Medicaid, education makes up the largest share of the state’s budget.

Polis has called for limiting tuition increases to 2.6% for in-state students and 3% for those from other states. But funding for higher education has long been a point of tension between Polis and university officials, who have said the governor’s proposals in years past didn’t provide enough money to meet his tuition targets.

This year, higher education institutions are especially vulnerable, in the wake of deep federal funding cuts and plummeting enrollment from international students.

For K-12, Polis proposes implementing 30% of Colorado’s new school finance formula, the rollout of which has been slowed down amid the state’s budget woes.

Other balancing proposals

Overall, Polis’ proposal calls for general fund spending to increase 2.3% to $18.6 billion, up from $18.2 billion in the current budget year.

Polis’ proposal would keep the state’s rainy day fund at 13% of what it spends on general expenses — down from the 15% lawmakers have sought to keep in reserve in recent years.

And, the governor is once again asking the legislature to privatize Pinnacol Assurance, the state-affiliated workers’ compensation insurer. Past estimates have suggested the sale of the insurer to private ownership could generate nearly $700 million for the state, which Polis wants to use to cover the cost of Colorado’s $200 million senior homestead property tax break next year. He suggests spending the rest on public building maintenance and to shore up other gaps in the budget or build up the reserve.

Lawmakers across multiple administrations have balked at the idea, arguing that it would leave Colorado without an insurer of last resort. Critics say it could lead to businesses being denied coverage. Supporters of the move say it would make Pinnacol more competitive in the modern insurance market. Under its current structure, it is prohibited from insuring out-of-state employees.