Canada is recruiting 64 researchers to universities across the country (source paywalled; alternative source), including 48 from U.S. institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and MIT. The hires are backed by more than $364 million in government funding and are part of a broader effort to attract researchers in fields such as AI, climate science, and medicine. The New York Times reports: While scientists often shy away from political discourse, some are saying the Trump administration's assault on science is behind their departure. "I used to live in the country that I thought was the most enthusiastic about the prospects for science improving the human condition, of any country in the world," said Phillip Zamore, the chair of RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts. "And I woke up one day and that wasn't true anymore." He has been recruited to McGill University in Montreal, which has also hired five other researchers, and will join the medical faculty. "If scientists don't stand up for truth, no one will," Dr. Zamore said. The Canada-bound brain drain from U.S. institutions began last year as the Trump administration put forward policies that targeted foreign students, academic freedom and funding for equity-related programs. Kevin Hall, a nutrition scientist who left the U.S. National Institutes of Health last year, accusing federal officials of censoring his research on ultraprocessed foods, has been hired at the University of Ottawa. "While certain countries are cutting research and turning their back on academic freedom, we're doubling down on science," Melanie Joly, Canada's industry minister, told reporters at the announcement, in Vancouver, of the new university hiring. She billed it as the world's "largest talent attraction" project. The European Union has made a similar push. "Years from now, we will look back at today's announcement, and we will be able to seize the lasting impact of our choices," Ms. Joly said. Unpredictable decisions about funding prompted Seth Guikema, a professor in civil and environmental engineering, who has specialized in natural hazards modeling at the University of Michigan, to look elsewhere. His work focuses on how climate hazards inequitably affect communities, and that work has become harder to fund, he said. "Every country sets its priorities in terms of what is going to get funded, and I think Canada has done a very good job of supporting research in areas that really matter to society," said Dr. Guikema, who will start at Western University in London, Ontario in January.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader quotes a report fro SFGATE: From "rizz" to "meat proxy," words and phrases have fallen in and out of favor for centuries. Culture, politics and technological development have long influenced these trends, and now, new research shows that ChatGPT is beginning to influence how humans communicate. The findings from a team at the Pew Research Center show how, in a short time since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022 and other chatbots followed, the use of certain words and phrases has spiked on the web. The researchers, led by data scientist Samuel Bestvater, studied nearly half a million English language webpage texts in snapshots over the past five years. Not only has AI-written text become more common, but it could also be influencing how people write, such as trying to avoid using the "tells" that have become associated with AI-generated text. Bestvater and his team detected double the number of em dashes, double the frequency of particular words -- such as "delve," "testament" and "interplay" -- and nearly triple the use of a phrasing known as negative parallelisms ("it's not X, it's Y"), as well as a 63% increase in Oxford commas. But while AI labs continually try to tweak their models to generate more humanlike text, the people they're mimicking aren't staying the same. "Human writers might also be changing the way that they write in response to AI. I've seen some anecdotal evidence of people saying, 'Now I avoid em dashes,'" Bestvater said. "If human writers are adjusting their choices of words and phrases and punctuation to try to differentiate their writing from AI-generated text, then you would see a pattern that looks sort of like that in the chart." "You can see changes in people's speech. People are tending to more commonly use these low-frequency words in their speech because they're spending a lot of time listening to or reading AI-generated content," said Roger Kreuz, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Memphis who recently wrote about how difficult it is for people to identify bot-written text.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

On Thursday, a judge ruled that the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic earlier this year was unconstitutional, delivering the AI lab a win in a monthslong rollercoaster of a battle with the Trump administration.

The lawsuit, filed in March in a California district court, accused the Trump administration of unlawfully retaliating against Anthropic for setting "red lines," or unacceptable military use cases of its AI technology.

"The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," Judge Rita F. Lin, a district judge in the northern district of California, wrote in the ruling …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Windows 11 26H2 has finally entered the last phase of testing (Release Preview Channel), and we all saw that coming. On August 24, Windows Latest shared all the details of this year’s feature update, and as I noted, it’s a minor release that should ship either in the last week of September or early October.

Now, Windows 11 26H2 is in the Release Preview Channel, which usually happens a few weeks before release. But is this update even a big deal? I’d say no, but it’s worth it, and we need more of these, not fewer, as these minor releases allow the company to focus on quality improvements and the most requested features, which anyway ship via monthly updates.

Windows 11 26H2 is not a big update, and I would not even call it a “feature upgrade,” so if you’ve read any articles that claim otherwise, don’t believe them. Version 26H2 solely exists to reset the Windows lifecycle, as Windows 11 25H2 support ends in October 2027, and version 26H2 would be supported until 2028.

Microsoft does not expect users to move to Windows 11 27H2 (the next big, actually big, release) in October 2027. That’s why a Windows 11 26H2-like release is a necessity for the Windows lifecycle. Here’s a table I made for my own understanding, and it should explain why this update is happening:

Windows 11 version	Servicing branch	Home and Pro support ends	Enterprise and Education support ends
Windows 11 24H2	24H2 / Germanium	October 13, 2026	October 12, 2027
Windows 11 25H2	24H2 / Germanium	October 12, 2027	October 10, 2028
Windows 11 26H2	24H2 / Germanium	Expected around October 2028*	Expected around October 2029*

Trying Windows 11 26H2 via Release Preview Channel

Release Preview is a channel of the Windows Insider Program that gives you updates that are closer to the quality of public builds.

This means that if you join the Windows Insider Program and sign up for the Release Preview Channel to download Windows 11 26H2, you’re getting a near-public release build, and you’re unlikely to run into any visible problems.

When Windows 11 26H2 hits the public channel (non-Insider) at either the end of September or in early October, you can always opt out of the Release Preview Channel.

But is it worth joining the Windows Insider Program just to try Windows 11 26H2? Absolutely not. You’re better off running Windows 11 25H2 because the two are essentially the same thing, and in Microsoft’s words, these two releases are based on 24H2, which introduced a shared servicing branch in 2024.

“It also means that they share the same new features and enhancements delivered through our continuous innovation efforts,” Microsoft noted in a new document.

That means the only thing Windows 11 26H2 does differently is change the build number. With Windows 11 26H2, the OS build number bumps to 26300. For comparison, 25H2 is 26200, while 24H2 is 26100.

But for enterprises, there’s at least one notable change, and that is Windows Backup getting turned on by default.

Microsoft also said you’ll be able to use “app-specific actions from the taskbar” in Windows 11 26H2, which likely refers to new agentic features, but they only work with Microsoft 365 Enterprise, so it’s again not for consumers.

However, Windows 11 26H2 “unlocks” all features that have been “gradually” rolling out over these months, including File Explorer improvements, the new Start menu, and more. This may be one reason to try and get Windows 11 26H2, but it’s certainly not worth joining the Insider Program.

When will Windows 11 26H2 hit the public channel?

Microsoft won’t commit to any specific release dates, but when you take a look at the past record, Windows 11 26H2 will most certainly release in the last week of September or early October. However, a wider rollout would only start by the end of the year or early 2027.

Until then, it’ll be available for “seekers,” either those who manually check for updates and hit Download & install under Windows 11 26H2.

And the installation media we all love

There’s one more thing that deserves our attention, and that is Windows 11 26H2 installation media.

Microsoft has also started testing the Media Creation Tool and ISO files ahead of the public rollout. Although Windows 11 26H2 is a minor “enablement package” update on existing PCs, you’ll still be allowed to clean install it using the traditional methods. Nothing changes on that front.

The post Microsoft prepares Windows 11 26H2 installation media for public roll out, as it hits Release Preview Channel appeared first on Windows Latest

Windows 11’s August Optional update, KB5120998, is out, and it brings the taskbar to any side of your screen, a resizable Start menu, and a Windows Search that finally lets you turn off Bing. These are the three most-awaited changes in this update for all PCs. They have been in Insiders builds for some time now.

You can install KB5120998 today, but there is a good chance that these three features won’t show up right away. Microsoft gives the update to everyone, but the features are enabled in stages, and most people who install it will not see anything different at first. Fortunately, there is a safe way to force all three on right now.

An optional update (preview update) is Microsoft’s way of testing new features on real PCs before bringing them into next month’s mandatory Patch Tuesday release. Installing it is voluntary, though. So, you can wait for that mandatory rollup, or install KB5120998 now and manually switch the features on yourself with a small tool called ViVeTool.

How to enable the big new features in the Windows 11 August Optional update

Start by installing KB5120998. Go to Settings > Windows Update and click Check for updates, then click the Download & install button next to the 2026-08 Preview Update.

You can also grab the offline .msu installer directly from our KB5120998 coverage if Windows Update is not offering it yet. Restart once it finishes.

After rebooting, check Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors and Settings > Personalization > Start. If you see a Taskbar position option or a Start menu size dropdown, the feature has already reached your PC, and you can skip straight to the sections below.

However, the chances are that you may not see anything new yet, and that is expected.

Microsoft ships new Windows features through Controlled Feature Rollout, or CFR. The code for all three features is already on your PC as soon as KB5120998 finishes installing, but Microsoft keeps it switched off remotely for most devices while it watches for crashes and bug reports from the first wave of PCs.

Your device has the feature. Microsoft just has not flipped the switch for you yet. Now, we will tell you how to manually switch these features on.

How to install ViVeTool

ViVeTool is a small, free command-line tool that allows you to flip those switches instead of waiting for Microsoft’s server to do it. It only changes feature flags already built into Windows. It does not install anything hidden or alter your data, and everything it changes can be reversed the same way it was enabled.

1. Download the latest ViVeTool release from its official GitHub page. Grab the ViVeTool-v0.3.4-IntelAmd.zip file if your PC runs an Intel or AMD chip, or the Snapdragon version if you have a Copilot+ PC on Arm.

   

2. Right-click the downloaded zip file and choose Extract All, then pick a simple location like C:\ViVeTool.

   

3. Open the Start menu, type cmd, right-click Command Prompt, and choose Run as administrator.
4. Type cd C:\ViVeTool (or wherever you extracted the files) and press Enter to move into that folder. Do this first every time you want to use ViVeTool.

   

ViVeTool ID to enable all features at once in August Optional update

Usually, there are ViVeTool IDs for each feature, but here we have one master ID that switches on the whole bundle from this update in a single command.

So, after doing Step 4 from above, type this and press Enter:

vivetool /enable /id:61161244

You will see it say “Successfully set feature configuration(s)”. Now, we’ll normally ask to restart your PC. However, this ID may not be enough to enable all features, so before you restart, copy-paste the following prompt as well:

vivetool /enable /id:62353331,62762248,61754985

Note that feature IDs correspond to specific builds and can stop working once Microsoft adds a feature permanently into Windows. But for now, you can disable it too by typing disable instead of enable in the above prompt.

How to move and shrink the Windows 11 taskbar

Once the feature is active, either from CFR reaching your PC or from the ViVeTool command above, Windows 11’s taskbar can finally move for the first time since the OS launched in 2021.

Before the update:

After the update: 

• Go to Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors.
• Under Taskbar position, pick Left, Top, Right, or Bottom.
• Under Taskbar size, switch from Default to Small if you want a slimmer bar in addition to repositioning it.

Search box and the smaller taskbar variant only work when the taskbar stays at the top or bottom for now, so moving it to a side drops those two options until Microsoft extends support later. Icon alignment options adjust automatically based on where you place the bar, and animations, tooltips, and flyouts all follow the new position correctly.

Either way, I have now switched to a smaller vertical taskbar, and this is my identity now!

How to resize and customize the new Windows 11 Start menu

The Start menu changes get rid of a complaint Windows Latest has been raising since November, where the redesigned Start menu could eat up to 70 percent of the screen on smaller laptops.

Before the update:

After the update: 

• Go to Settings > Personalization > Start.
• Use the Start menu size dropdown to switch between Automatic, Small, and Large.

  

• You can toggle Pinned, Recent, and All independently according to your wish to show or hide each section.
• Turn on Hide your name and profile picture on Start if you stream, screen share, or record your desktop often and want to hide your identity.

  

The Recommended section has also been renamed to Recent everywhere in Settings and the Start menu, and Microsoft has decoupled it from File Explorer’s jump list history. Turning off Recent in Start no longer wipes out your recent files list in File Explorer, which used to happen as an unrelated side effect.

How to turn off Web Searches and the Microsoft Store results in Windows Search

The Bing and Store toggle alone is worth installing the update for. Windows Search can now run without web results or Store suggestions cluttering what you searched for, showing only your own apps, settings, and files.

Before the update:

After the update:

• Go to Settings > Privacy & security > Search.
• Find Show suggested search results and expand it.
• Turn off Web Searches to stop Bing results from appearing in Search.
• Turn off Microsoft Store to stop app suggestions from showing up alongside local results.

  

With both toggles off, Search only returns what exists on your PC, and queries with no local match won’t return anything, instead of falling back to a web result.

And perhaps one of the most important cleanups, Search home is also less cluttered now, leading with your recent searches instead of promotional tiles and MSN feed. Fortunately, this is the new default, and there is no toggle needed to enable it.

Each result also shows a label showing whether it is an app, a file, a setting, a web result, or a Store suggestion before you click it.

When will these features arrive without needing ViVeTool

Microsoft doesn’t publish a timeline for when a Controlled Feature Rollout finishes, and it varies by feature, hardware, and region. Going by how past optional updates played out, taskbar repositioning and the Start menu changes each took roughly three to five weeks to reach most PCs after their initial rollout began. The new Windows Search experience has generally moved faster once out of the Experimental ring.

The safest bet is the next mandatory Patch Tuesday update, coming on September 8, 2026. Microsoft brings all features added to the August optional rollout into that release for everyone, but that too has the same CFR limitations. Personally, I have already updated my daily driver PC with the optional update and all the ViVeTool commands as well. I haven’t noticed any issues so far.

Have you been waiting for these updates to come on your PC?

The post Windows 11’s 3 most requested features released today, enable them using these steps appeared first on Windows Latest

Google is imposing new memory-use limits on Android apps as the AI data center boom contributes to a broader memory chip shortage that could leave lower-cost phones with less RAM. Developers will have until February 2027 to meet new thresholds for memory and bitmap usage. To aid developers, Google is adding tools to flag apps that exceed the limits and help prevent slowdowns and crashes. TechCrunch reports: The company explains that the mobile industry is now facing "significant hardware supply constraints that are altering device memory availability," which can then, in turn, affect the consumer's experience with their devices. To address this, Google is now establishing new performance thresholds across several areas, like dynamic memory usage and bitmap usage. In addition, Google is adding code optimization requirements designed to prevent things like app slowdowns and crashes related to performance.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.