Five of the seven crew members on the International Space Station briefly sought refuge inside a SpaceX return capsule Friday morning as two Russian cosmonauts worked on an air leak on the other end of the complex.
NASA ordered US astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, French astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev into SpaceX's Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft around 9 am EST (14:00 UTC) on Friday. The foursome launched aboard the SpaceX crew capsule on the Crew-12 mission in February, and the ship serves as their lifeboat until the crew's scheduled return to Earth in September.
NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who flew to the station in a Russian Soyuz ferry ship, joined the Crew-12 astronauts inside the Dragon spacecraft.
Just over a year ago, the Trump Administration issued an executive order meant to accelerate the development of nuclear power in the US. While an entire startup ecosystem has developed around the use of different—and typically smaller—reactor designs, only one of them has been fully licensed so far, and there are no plans to actually build any instances of that design.
The executive order directed the Department of Energy to have three different reactor designs reach criticality in a bit over a year. On Thursday, a startup called Antares announced that a test reactor it had placed at the Idaho National Laboratory had reached criticality, making it the first new design to cross this threshold. Criticality means that the nuclear reactions inside the hardware had become self sustaining; it does not mean the reactor had started to generate power.
Antares is one of a number of companies that is basing its design on a new fuel system called TRISO that takes some of the complexity and safety out of the reactor design and places them in the fuel design. The fuel design is based on tiny pellets with a uranium oxide core. The pellets are surrounded by several layers of carbon that can moderate the energy of both the neutrons and lighter nuclei that are released by fission reactions. All of that is encased in a hard ceramic shell that's designed to withstand the highest temperatures that can be produced by the encased uranium.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his administration's latest attempt to prop up the US coal industry during an incoherent press event that randomly oscillated between energy issues and Trump's fixation with building and renovating monuments in DC. The energy portion of the events was also frequently disconnected from reality.
"Today we're taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal," said Trump, apparently unaware that coal is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity in the US.
With wind and solar power getting cheaper, coal has become the second-most expensive way of producing electricity, trailing only the cost of building a new nuclear plant. As a result, no new coal plants have been completed in over a decade, and coal has gone from powering over half the electrical grid to producing only about 15 percent of the nation's electricity. That's before the indirect costs of coal use are considered. It produces the most greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy, releases dangerous particulates and chemicals into the atmosphere, and leaves behind ash that has high levels of toxic metals.
Smartwatches can track your health stats, but they also do a lot of other things you might not always want or need. The $100 Fitbit Air tracker ditches the screens that have become common on people's wrists, leaving behind a tiny puck of health sensors you can often forget you're wearing. You will not, however, forget that Google's new health platform is built around AI.
The Air has no speaker, and there's only one LED on the side to indicate battery level. You can double-tap the tracker to check the level, and that's about the end of on-device features. The vibration motor is only for alarms—it can't sync with notifications on your phone. That makes sense, given there is no screen to tell you what that buzz was all about.
The Fitbit Air doesn't have a display or buttons—just a small LED on the side for battery status.
Credit:
Ryan Whitwam
The stock Performance Band is simple, consisting of a smooth polyester yarn with small velcro pads and a metal loop. It's durable but does seem to absorb a bit of moisture. For swimming or heavy workouts, you'll probably want the silicone active band. This one hides the Air puck a bit more effectively, and it looks good in a sporty way.
Welcome to Edition 8.44 of the Rocket Report! The news this week is decidedly weighted in favor of heavy-lift rockets, largely due to the fallout from last Thursday's explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn on its launch pad in Florida. Blue Origin aims to resume launches at the badly damaged launch facility by the end of the year, but there's good reason to be skeptical of this timeline. With New Glenn grounded, will Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos approach Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch his Blue Moon lander to the lunar south pole? It sure sounds like NASA is pushing for that.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Spaceport development moves forward in Canada. There's been a lot of talk about the Canadian government's recent commitment to invest in a sovereign launch capability. There was the announcement last year of a federal budget of 182.6 million Canadian dollars ($131 million) over three years to establish a sovereign launch program. In March, the government said it would lease a dedicated launch pad at a commercially developed spaceport in Nova Scotia for national defense purposes, committing 200 million Canadian dollars ($144 million) to the deal. The agreement is a boon for Maritime Launch Services, which is developing Spaceport Nova Scotia after years of slow progress at the coastal site, SpaceQ reports.
Welcome to Edition 8.44 of the Rocket Report! The news this week is decidedly weighted in favor of heavy-lift rockets, largely due to the fallout from last Thursday's explosion of Blue Origin's New Glenn on its launch pad in Florida. Blue Origin aims to resume launches at the badly damaged launch facility by the end of the year, but there's good reason to be skeptical of this timeline. With New Glenn grounded, will Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos approach Elon Musk's SpaceX to launch his Blue Moon lander to the lunar south pole? It sure sounds like NASA is pushing for that.
As always, we welcome reader submissions. If you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Spaceport development moves forward in Canada. There's been a lot of talk about the Canadian government's recent commitment to invest in a sovereign launch capability. There was the announcement last year of a federal budget of 182.6 million Canadian dollars ($131 million) over three years to establish a sovereign launch program. In March, the government said it would lease a dedicated launch pad at a commercially developed spaceport in Nova Scotia for national defense purposes, committing 200 million Canadian dollars ($144 million) to the deal. The agreement is a boon for Maritime Launch Services, which is developing Spaceport Nova Scotia after years of slow progress at the coastal site, SpaceQ reports.
Last week's explosion of a New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was clearly a setback for Blue Origin and NASA, but it was a learning experience for safety officials looking to open up the spaceport to hundreds more launches per year.
The launch base on Florida's Space Coast is gearing up for a flurry of new arrivals. SpaceX is building multiple launch pads for its super-heavy Starship rocket, which will operate within a few miles of launch pads operated by SpaceX rivals Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. Two other companies, Stoke Space and Relativity Space, are also developing launch sites along a narrow stretch of coastline at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
All of them have, or will soon have, rockets burning methane or liquified natural gas, replacing legacy launch vehicles fueled by kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid propellants. There are good technical reasons for making the switch, but until last week, engineers had scant real-world data on the damage that millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen would cause if a fully loaded rocket exploded on the launch pad or soon after liftoff.
Last week's explosion of a New Glenn rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, was clearly a setback for Blue Origin and NASA, but it was a learning experience for safety officials looking to open up the spaceport to hundreds more launches per year.
The launch base on Florida's Space Coast is gearing up for a flurry of new arrivals. SpaceX is building multiple launch pads for its super-heavy Starship rocket, which will operate within a few miles of launch pads operated by SpaceX rivals Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. Two other companies, Stoke Space and Relativity Space, are also developing launch sites along a narrow stretch of coastline at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
All of them have, or will soon have, rockets burning methane or liquified natural gas, replacing legacy launch vehicles fueled by kerosene, liquid hydrogen, or solid propellants. There are good technical reasons for making the switch, but until last week, engineers had scant real-world data on the damage that millions of pounds of methane and liquid oxygen would cause if a fully loaded rocket exploded on the launch pad or soon after liftoff.
Selon la société d’études Sensor Tower, ChatGPT d’OpenAI a franchi le cap du milliard d’utilisateurs actifs mensuels (UAM) sur son application en mai 2026, devenant ainsi la plus rapide de l’histoire à atteindre ce seuil.
Dans son rapport State of Mobile 2026, Sensor Tower constate que ChatGPT a été plus rapide que d’autres applications populaires – dont Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram et YouTube – pour franchir le seuil du milliard d’utilisateurs, un jalon atteint trois ans seulement après son lancement.
Ce chiffre confirme la position dominante d’OpenAI dans la bataille pour la suprématie des chatbots IA, où ChatGPT affronte notamment Claude d’Anthropic et Grok de X.
En avril, OpenAI avait annoncé atteindre 900 millions d’utilisateurs actifs hebdomadaires fin décembre 2025 et un débit API supérieur à 15 milliards de tokens par minute. La société n’a toutefois pas publié de statistiques officielles pour 2026.
Claude dans la course
Sensor Tower relève que Claude commence à gagner du terrain. Au deuxième trimestre 2026, la plateforme d’Anthropic atteint 56 millions d’UAM pour son application, soit une croissance de 640 % sur un an, à comparer aux 62 % affichés par ChatGPT.
Sensor Tower note également que les utilisateurs américains de ChatGPT ayant installé Claude au cours des trois premiers mois de 2026 ont utilisé l’ancienne application 5 % moins fréquemment dans le mois suivant l’installation, par rapport à leur usage moyen au cours des huit mois précédents.
« La croissance de Claude pourrait être portée par d’importantes avancées modèles au cours de l’année écoulée, ou par la montée en puissance du sentiment des consommateurs après l’annonce du partenariat d’OpenAI avec le département de la Guerre au premier trimestre 2026 », commente Sensor Tower.
Anthropic a déposé cette semaine un dossier d’introduction en Bourse aux États-Unis. OpenAI devrait très prochainement faire de même.
Sensor Tower estime que Grok, le chatbot d’Elon Musk, comptait 50 millions d’UAM.
AI could soon lead to systems capable of improving their own performance faster than humans can effectively supervise them, reviving concerns about the industry’s longstanding “alignment problem,” ensuring AI systems reliably pursue human goals, senior Anthropic researchers have warned in a new blog post titled “When AI builds itself.”
Anthropic Institute lead Marina Favaro and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark outlined three possible futures: growth in AI capabilities may flatten out; AI efficiency gains may continue to grow, but expose bottlenecks elsewhere in software development; or AI systems may become capable of full recursive self-improvement, and build their successors by themselves. It’s that third scenario that’s prompting them to suggest society be ready to hit the brakes on AI development.
“How the alignment problem gets solved — or not — in this future is something we are least certain about,” they wrote. Advanced, self-improving models could follow our needs and wants — or, they warned, “The rare occurrences of misalignment present in today’s models could compound as the models build their successors, growing more frequent but less understood until we lose control of them. It’s possible that we can’t build, integrate, and verify the tools that we’d need to understand which trendline we are actually on.”
While Anthropic’s warning is framed around future AI development, analysts say it highlights governance questions enterprises are already beginning to confront as autonomous AI agents move from answering questions to taking actions.
“The issue is no longer just whether AI gives the right answer, but whether autonomous systems take the right action, at the right time, within the right authority,” said Ashish Banerjee, senior principal analyst at Gartner.
From model governance to agent governance
The warning comes amid growing enterprise investment in agentic AI.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI and that one-third of enterprise software applications will incorporate agentic AI capabilities. The firm has also warned that governance shortcomings are already emerging, predicting that 40% of enterprises will demote or decommission autonomous AI agents by 2027 after governance failures become apparent in production environments.
Banerjee said many organizations continue to approach AI agents as advanced productivity tools when they increasingly resemble digital workers operating with delegated authority.
“CIOs should stop treating AI agents as smarter chatbots,” he said. “They are becoming digital workers with delegated authority — and must be governed like privileged users, not productivity tools.”
As agents gain the ability to conduct research, write code, invoke tools, trigger workflows, and make recommendations, enterprises face new risks around unauthorized actions, accountability gaps, data exposure, tool misuse, and insufficient auditability, Banerjee said.
“Human-in-the-loop is not a strategy if the human cannot keep up with the loop,” he said.
Charlie Dai, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, said Anthropic’s concerns mirror challenges enterprises are already encountering as AI systems gain greater autonomy.
“Alignment becomes operational,” Dai said. “It is about ensuring agents consistently act within policy, not just model accuracy.”
Current governance approaches focus largely on models and data, but increasingly autonomous agents require oversight of runtime behavior, permissions, tool usage, and decision boundaries, Dai said.
Concerns about agent oversight are not limited to AI vendors and industry analysts.
In AI Agent Governance: A Field Guide, researchers from Institute for AI Policy and Strategy warned that “society is largely unprepared for this development” and said “the exploration of agent governance questions and the development of associated interventions remain in their infancy.” The paper argues that advances in autonomous AI agents are outpacing the governance mechanisms needed to oversee them.
Both analysts argued that governance frameworks originally designed for generative AI models may prove insufficient for increasingly autonomous systems. Dai said organizations will need greater oversight of runtime behavior, permissions, tool usage, and decision boundaries as agents become more capable.
Why Anthropic is worried
Anthropic’s researchers argue that those governance questions could become significantly harder if AI systems become increasingly involved in the process of AI research and development itself.
Favaro and Clark stopped short of predicting that fully autonomous recursive self-improvement is inevitable. Instead, they argued that the possibility warrants preparation and discussion among developers, policymakers, and other stakeholders. They also suggested the industry may eventually need mechanisms to slow development if capabilities begin advancing faster than safeguards, while acknowledging that such measures carry risks of their own.
“But if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe,” they wrote in the blog post.
Forrester’s Dai said the practical implication for enterprises is that governance can no longer depend primarily on human review.
“Supervision becomes architectural, not manual,” he said. Organizations will increasingly need bounded autonomy, embedded guardrails, verifiable execution mechanisms, and fallback controls designed into agentic systems from the outset.
At some point during the fog of 2021 or 2022, I noticed that my son's preferred brand of fruit snacks had switched from including 0.9 ounces per pouch to 0.8 ounces per pouch. Most shrinkflation is meant to fly under the radar, but in this case, I just happened to notice it. It felt bad! It's tangible evidence that your money is not going as far as it did in the very recent past.
A little over a year ago, AMD launched the Radeon RX 9070 for a suggested retail price of $549. This month, it's launching the similarly named Radeon RX 9070 GRE for a suggested retail price of $549. This new card (actually the US launch of a GPU that's been available in China for a year or so) has 85 percent as many GPU cores, 75 percent as much memory, and 66 percent as much memory bandwidth as the regular RX 9070.
We'll evaluate the RX 9070 GRE in the context of the current GPU market, where prices have been edging upward due to the same AI-driven RAM shortages and price hikes that have made PC building and buying such a miserable experience for the last few months. But it's hard not to be a little upset about such a clear example of GPU shrinkflation—the same money for a markedly inferior product.
Windows 11 does a lot under the hood to speed up a PC’s performance, but PCs tend to slow down over time as they accumulate apps, files, drivers, and other detritus. Even zippy new Windows 11 devices can be sped up — and protected against future slowdowns — with a few minor system tweaks.
It’s simple to make your Windows PC run faster. Just follow these tips.
Note: This story covers Windows 11 version 25H2. If you have an earlier release of Windows 11, some things may be slightly different. If you have Windows 10, see our Windows 10 speed tips.
1. Disable programs that run on startup
Your Windows 11 PC could be a laggard if programs you rarely or never use are running in the background. Your PC will run faster if you stop them from running.
To do it, first launch the Task Manager in one of these ways:
Press Ctrl-Shift-Esc.
Right-click the lower-right corner of your screen and select Task Manager.
Type task manager into the Windows 11 search box and press Enter.
There’s a lot you can use Task Manager for, but here we’re focusing only on killing unnecessary programs that run at startup.
Click the Startup apps icon on the left side of the screen. (It’s the fifth icon from the top.) It displays a list of the programs and services that launch when you start Windows. The list includes each program’s name as well as its publisher, whether it’s enabled to run on startup, and its “Startup impact,” which is how much it slows down Windows 11 when the system starts up. Note, though, that the screen doesn’t show how much each program will impact your performance after startup, during normal PC operations.
You can use the Windows Task Manager to get information about programs that launch at startup and disable any you don’t need.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
Also note that not all apps will have useful information about their startup impact — many show up as “Not measured” in Task Manager. There are multiple reasons you might see this. For example, some apps don’t provide the Windows metadata required to measure their startup impact, and others start up too late in the boot process to be measured. Still others may not have been started a sufficient number of times for Windows to measure their impact. (The Windows Club has an article with tips and workarounds for “Not measured” apps.)
To stop a program or service from launching at startup, right-click it and select Disable. This doesn’t disable the program entirely; it only prevents it from launching at startup — you can run the application after launch. Also, if you later decide you want it to launch at startup, you can return to this area of the Task Manager, right-click the application and select Enable.
Many of the programs and services that run on startup may be familiar to you, like Microsoft OneDrive or Spotify. But you may not recognize many of them. (Anyone who immediately knows what “bzbui.exe” is, please raise your hand. No fair Googling it first.)
The Task Manager can find information about unfamiliar programs. Right-click an item and select Properties for more information about it, including its location on your hard disk, whether it has a digital signature, and other information such as the version number, the file size, and the last time it was modified. (Note that not all programs provide this information when you right-click them — the Properties button may be grayed out.)
You can also right-click the item and select Open file location. That opens File Explorer and takes it to the folder where the file is located, which may give you another clue about the program’s purpose.
Finally, and most helpfully, you can select Search online after you right-click. Bing will then launch with links to sites with information about the program or service. With Task Manager’s help, I easily discovered that bzbui.exe is Backblaze backup software, something I want to run automatically during startup.
If you’re worried about one of the listed applications, you can go to a site run by Reason Software called “Should I Block It?” and search for the file name. You’ll usually find very solid information about the program or service.
Now that you’ve selected all the programs that you want to disable at startup, the next time you restart your computer, the system won’t launch those unnecessary programs automatically, and your PC may run faster.
2. Turn off unused apps with high resource usage
It’s easy to forget just how many apps you’ve got running at the same time in Windows. Sometimes your PC’s sluggishness can be due to running too many apps you’re not currently using — or a single app that’s taking up a lot of resources.
First launch Task Manager using one of the methods covered in the previous tip. If you’re already in Task Manager, click the Processes icon on the left side of the screen (three squares in a grid, second from top) to get to the Processes screen. You’ll see a list of every app or process you’re currently running.
Look for apps you’re currently running but not actively using, and also look for any not running with high memory or CPU usage. Right-click any app you want to close and select End task.
Use Task Manager to identify and shut down unused apps using lots of system resources.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
3. Use Efficiency Mode
Task Manager has another trick up its sleeve for juicing Windows 11 performance. Efficiency Mode can speed up your PC and improve laptop battery life. It lowers the process priority of background applications, among other efficiency tricks.
The term is a bit of a misnomer, because you can’t put your entire PC into Efficiency Mode. Instead, you use Task Manager to put individual apps and processes into it. There’s one caveat: You’ll only be able to use it on some apps and processes.
On the Processes screen in Task Manager (see previous tip), look through the list of currently running apps and processes. Click the app or process you want to put into Efficiency Mode, click the Efficiency mode icon at the top right of the screen, and then confirm that you want to turn on Efficiency Mode for the app.
Note that if the Efficiency mode icon is grayed out when you click an app or process, you won’t be able to use it. Also, some apps, including Microsoft Edge, automatically work in Efficiency Mode by default, and the mode can’t be turned off.
Turning on Efficiency Mode for an app.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
4. Use automatic Windows maintenance
In the background, Windows 11 constantly performs maintenance on your PC, doing things like security scanning and performing system diagnostics to make sure everything is up to snuff. It automatically fixes problems it finds, which helps your PC run at peak performance. The automatic maintenance runs every day at 2:00 a.m. if your device is plugged into a power source and is asleep.
However, that feature may have been accidentally turned off, or it may not have run recently if you shut down your PC at night (rather than putting it in Sleep mode) or you haven’t had your laptop plugged in for a while. You should make sure it’s turned on and runs every day. You can also run it manually if you’d like.
Type control in the search box on the taskbar and select Control Panel from the results to run the Control Panel app. In the app, select System and Security > Security and Maintenance. In the Maintenance section, under Automatic Maintenance, click Start maintenance if you want it to run now.
To make sure that it runs every day, click Change maintenance settings, and on the screen that appears, select the time you’d like maintenance to run and check the box next to Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time. Then click OK.
Here’s how to set a time each day for Windows 11 to run its maintenance tasks.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
5. Kill adware and bloatware
It may be that what’s slowing your PC down isn’t Windows 11, but bloatware or adware that takes up CPU and system resources. Adware and bloatware are particularly insidious because they may have been installed by your computer’s manufacturer. (This is generally not a problem for business PCs but is very common on consumer devices.) They typically run automatically at startup without you even knowing it. You’ll be amazed at how much better your PC will run if you get rid of it.
Start by running a system scan to find adware and malware. If you’ve already installed a security suite such as Norton Security or McAfee LiveSafe, you can use that. Microsoft Defender Antivirus, the anti-malware tool built into the Windows Security app, also does a great job. Type windows security in the search box, press Enter, and on the screen that appears, click Virus & threat protection and then click Quick scan. Windows Security will look for malware and remove any it finds.
You should get a second opinion, though, so consider a free tool like Malwarebytes. The free version scans for malware and adware and removes what it finds; the paid version offers always-on protection to stop infections in the first place.
Malwarebytes scans for and removes malware.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
Now that you’ve done all that, check for bloatware and uninstall it. A good free anti-bloatware tool is Bulk Crap Uninstaller. You can also go to the website Should I Remove It? — it offers recommendations on what software is useful, and what you can uninstall.
There’s a section of the website devoted to advice on how to remove bloatware on PCs from specific manufacturers. I highly recommend going there, because it lists all the bloatware different manufacturers install on their PCs. That section of the site also compares how much bloatware major manufacturers ship on their PCs. It rates Toshiba as having the most and Acer as having the least.
Finally, when you buy a new PC online, check whether there’s an option to leave off trial software and software you don’t need to run your PC. That will stop bloatware from getting on your system in the first place.
6. Turn off search indexing
Windows 11 search performs indexing in your hard disk in the background, allowing you to search your PC more quickly than if no indexing were being done. That’s good for fast searches, but not so good for slower PCs, because indexing can cause a performance hit. You can give a slower machine a speed boost by turning off indexing. Even if you have an SSD disk, turning off indexing can improve your speed, because the constant writing to disk that indexing does can eventually slow down SSDs.
To turn it off, type services.msc into the search box on the taskbar and press Enter. The Services app appears. Scroll down to either Indexing Service or Windows Search in the list of services. Double-click it, and on the screen that appears, click Stop. Then reboot your machine. Your searches may be slightly slower, but you also may not notice the difference. You should, though, get an overall speed boost.
Here’s how to turn off Windows 11 indexing.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
Alternatively, you can turn off indexing only for files in certain locations. In this way, you can still index files and folders you often search for but turn off indexing for the rest of your hard disk. So you’d still get fast searches for files you use often, while increasing your PC’s performance.
To do it, type index in the Windows 11 search box and click the Indexing Options result that appears. The Indexing Options page of the Control Panel appears. Click the Modify button, and you’ll see a list of locations that are being indexed, such as Microsoft Outlook, your personal files, and so on. Uncheck the box next to any location, and it will no longer be indexed.
7. Clean out your hard drive
A bloated hard drive filled with files you don’t need can slow down your PC. Taking a few minutes to clean it can give an immediate speed boost. A built-in Windows 11 tool called Storage Sense will do the job for you.
Launch the Settings app, select System > Storage, scroll down to the “Storage management” section, and next to Storage Sense, move the toggle from Off to On. From now on, Windows will constantly monitor your PC and delete old junk files you no longer need — temporary files, files in the Downloads folder that haven’t been changed in a month, and old Recycle Bin files.
Here’s where to turn on Storage Sense.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
You can also customize when Storage Sense runs and what should be deleted automatically — for example, whether to delete files from the Downloads folder after they’ve been there for more than 30 days. To do it, click the right-facing arrow next to the Storage Sense On/Off slider.
8. Disable shadows, animations, and visual effects
Those who like eye candy are probably big fans of Windows 11’s shadows, animations, and visual effects. They typically don’t affect performance on fast, newer PCs. But they can exact a performance hit on older, slower machines.
If you’ve got a slower PC, turn them off. To do it, in the Windows 11 search box, type sysdm.cpl, press Enter, and then click the sysdm.cpl icon. That launches the Control Panel’s System Properties dialog box. Click the Advanced tab and click Settings in the Performance section. That brings you to the Performance Options dialog box. (Make sure you’re on the Visual Effects tab of the dialog box.) You’ll see a varied list of animations and special effects.
The Performance Options dialog box lets you turn off visual effects that might be slowing down Windows 11.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
If you love to tweak, you can turn individual options on and off. These are the animations and special effects you’ll probably want to turn off, because they have the greatest effect on system performance:
Animate controls and elements inside windows
Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Animations in the taskbar
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Show shadows under windows
However, it’s a lot easier to just select the Adjust for best performance option at the top of the screen and click OK. Windows 11 will then turn off the effects that slow down your system.
9. Disable transparency
To get an even bigger speed boost, go beyond turning off shadows, animations, and visual effects. Also disable the transparency effects in the taskbar and other Windows 11 locations. Windows does a surprising amount of heavy lifting to create transparency effects, and turning them off can make a difference in system performance.
To do it, run the Settings app and select Personalization > Colors, then move the Transparency effects slider to Off.
Turning off Windows 11’s transparency effects can help speed up performance.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
10. Change your power settings
Your Windows 11 PC’s power settings let you balance its energy use with its performance. If you’re using the most power-efficient setting, you’re slowing down your PC, because the setting reduces your PC’s performance to save energy. (Even desktop PCs typically have a power-saving setting.) Changing your power setting to one of the less power-efficient options will give you an instant performance boost.
To do it, run the Settings app, then choose System and click the right-facing arrow next to Power. Depending on whether you’re using a laptop or a desktop PC (and if you’re using a laptop, whether it’s plugged in), you’ll see either a “Plugged in” or “On battery” setting that lists the power mode you’re using. Click the drop-down arrow next to it and choose the setting you want.
Change your power settings to give your PC a performance boost.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
Best Performance gives you the most oomph but uses the most power. Balanced finds a happy medium between power use and better performance, and Best Power Efficiency does everything it can to give you as much battery life as possible. Desktop users have no reason to choose Best Power Efficiency, and even laptop users should consider the Balanced option when unplugged.
11. Turn off Windows tips and tricks
Windows 11 constantly watches what you’re doing on your PC and gives you tips about things you might want to do with the operating system. I’ve never found these tips helpful. And I don’t like the privacy implications of Windows constantly taking a virtual look over my shoulder. (Also see: How to protect your privacy in Windows 11.)
Beyond that, this monitoring can also make your PC run more sluggishly. So to speed things up, tell Windows to stop being so nosy and giving you advice. To do it, run the Settings app and select System > Notifications. Scroll down to Additional settings and click the down arrow. From the options that appear, uncheck the box marked Get tips and suggestions when using Windows.
Turn off Windows’ suggestions to help things run more smoothly (and regain a measure of privacy).
Preston Gralla / Foundry
12. Disable Game Mode
Windows 11’s Game Mode optimizes your PC for playing games. When it detects that you’re playing a game, it prioritizes system resources for gaming, taking them away from other apps and background processes. That’s great for serious gamers, but when you’re not playing games, it can slow down your system because it keeps some system resources in reserve in case you start playing a game. It occasionally causes stability issues as well. So turning off Game Mode may be able to give your PC a quick boost. (You can always turn it back on again when you want to play a game.)
Game Mode is turned on by default, so even if you’ve never played a game on your PC, it’s probably enabled. To turn it off, go to Settings > Gaming > Game Mode and move the Game Mode slider to Off.
Game Mode can sometimes cause stability and performance issues, so turning it off may give your PC a boost.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
13. Update device drivers
Your Windows 11 PC can become a slowpoke if its drivers are old and in the way. Outdated drivers can exact a big performance hit. Graphics drivers are often the biggest culprit in driver-related slowdowns. To check whether your graphics driver is outdated, and to update to the latest one:
In the Windows search box, type device manager and click on the Device Manager icon that appears.
Scroll to the Display Adapters entry and click the side-facing arrow to expand it.
Right-click the driver, and from the context menu that appears, select Update Driver.
You’ll be asked whether to have Windows search for an updated driver, or whether you want to find one and install it manually. Your best bet is to let Windows do the work. Follow the on-screen instructions to get the driver installed.
You can use the Device Manager to update all your drivers this way. That’s time-consuming, so consider asking Windows to do the work for you. To do it, launch the Settings app (pressing the Windows key + I is a good shortcut for doing it) and select Windows Update from the left pane. Select Advanced Options > Optional Updates. You’ll see a list of all the updates Windows has found but hasn’t installed. Select any of the drivers you want to install, then click Download & install.
Tell Windows Update to update your drivers.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
14. Turn off background app permissions
Some apps run various processes in the background even if you don’ t launch them. You’ll likely never know they’re doing it, and they can cause unexpected slowdowns and a sluggish PC. Microsoft says these background processes do things such as syncing or sending notifications. That can slow your PC down, especially if more than one app is doing it.
You can head off performance problems by not allowing the apps to run in the background. To do it:
Go to Settings > Apps > Installed apps.
Click the three horizontal dots on the right of any app whose permissions you want to turn off and select Advanced options.
Click the dropdown under “Background app permissions,” and choose Never if you want to stop the app from ever running a process in the background, or Power optimized if you want to let Windows decide whether to let the processes run when they won’t cause your PC to take a performance hit.
Managing background app permissions properly can give your PC a performance boost.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
15. Roll back your PC to a previous state
Sometimes your PC will slow down for no apparent reason, and stay slow. It could be a new driver slowing your system down. Perhaps accidentally you changed a system setting that caused the problem. It can be difficult, and often impossible, to get to the root of these kinds of problems and fix them.
If you’ve noticed that your computer has become sluggish recently, there’s something that might solve the issue: Restore your PC to the state it was in before the problem began. You can easily do this via System Restore.
To do it:
Make sure System Restore is turned on by going to Settings > System > About, and under the “Device info” section, click System protection.
From the screen that appears, click Configure and select Turn on system protection if it’s not already turned on. Click OK.
You’ll be sent back to the System Protection screen. Click System Restore.
On the screen that appears, select Recommended restore and click Next if you want to revert to the most recent restore point. Select Choose a different restore point if you want to choose one yourself, and click Next.
Restart your PC. It will revert to its previous state. Note that when you do this, your documents, pictures, and personal data won’t be deleted.
Here’s how to turn on System Restore.
Preston Gralla / Foundry
16. Restart Windows
Here’s one of IT’s not-quite-secret weapons for troubleshooting and speeding up a PC: shut it down and restart it. Doing that clears out any excess use of RAM that otherwise can’t be cleared. It also kills processes that you might have set in motion and are no longer needed, but that continue running and slow your system.
If your Windows 11 PC has turned sluggish over time for no apparent reason, you may be surprised at how much more quickly it will run when you do this. I can vouch for it, and I restart my Windows 11 PCs regularly even if they’re not sluggish, just as a precautionary measure.
This article was originally published in February 2023 and most recently updated in June 2026.
Apple ha anunciado la apertura de un centro para desarrolladores en Berlín, el primero de la empresa en Europa, destinado a ayudar a las empresas del continente a crear y mejorar aplicaciones para sus dispositivos. La firma cuenta ya con instalaciones similares en Singapur, Shanghái, Cupertino y Bengaluru.
El centro, ubicado en el distrito de Mitte de la capital alemana, tiene previsto abrir sus puertas a finales de este año. Acogerá talleres, citas individuales y otras sesiones presenciales orientadas a mejorar el diseño y el rendimiento de las aplicaciones para iPhone, iPad, Mac y otros dispositivos de Apple, con asistencia práctica disponible en varios idiomas.
Susan Prescott, vicepresidenta de relaciones con desarrolladores a nivel mundial de la empresa, ha señalado que Europa alberga “una comunidad de desarrolladores que está creando aplicaciones que generan conexiones, fomentan la creatividad e impulsan la innovación”.
“Siempre hemos creído que cuando los desarrolladores cuentan con las herramientas y los recursos adecuados, se logran cosas notables. Esta creencia es la base de este centro, y esperamos ver lo que la comunidad seguirá desarrollando.”
Wirtgen Group trabaja activamente en el desarrollo de vehículos automatizados para la construcción de carreteras como paso previo hacia la autonomía total, recurriendo en parte a la misma tecnología que su empresa matriz, John Deere.
Durante una reciente demostración de maquinaria celebrada en la sede de la firma en Tennessee, sus directivos pusieron en valor las ventajas de su equipamiento pesado especializado para la construcción de carreteras.
La demanda de carreteras e infraestructuras no cesa de crecer, mientras los contratistas hacen frente a la escasez de mano de obra, el encarecimiento de los materiales, plazos más apretados y temporadas de pavimentación más cortas.
Solo en Estados Unidos, el sector de la construcción necesitará cerca de 700.000 trabajadores adicionales de aquí a 2031 para poder atender la demanda. A ello se suma que alrededor del 40% de los cuatro millones de millas de carreteras del país se encuentran en mal estado o en condiciones deficientes.
“Al hablar con nuestros clientes, aprendimos algunas cosas sobre sus retos empresariales, que se resumen en hacer más con menos”, ha dicho Craig Lamarque, vicepresidente y director de productos digitales de Wirtgen America. “Cada día, nuestros clientes son responsables de garantizar la seguridad en absolutamente todos sus lugares de trabajo, y tienen que lograrlo con personal cada vez menos cualificado y con menos experiencia.”
Lamarque ha señalado que los clientes deben completar más proyectos en plazos más ajustados para mantener la rentabilidad, al tiempo que gestionan problemas de materiales, presiones de sostenibilidad, escasez de mano de obra y la necesidad de ajustarse al presupuesto y a los plazos previstos. La respuesta de Wirtgen Group ha sido el desarrollo de herramientas digitales para afrontar estos retos.
La estrategia digital de la empresa se articula en torno a tres pilares: soporte conectado para maximizar el tiempo de actividad, inteligencia en el lugar de trabajo para detectar ineficiencias y mejorar la toma de decisiones, y automatización inteligente para mejorar el rendimiento de las máquinas. Todas estas capacidades están integradas en su gama de equipos para la construcción de carreteras y cuentan con el respaldo de hardware y software desarrollados en colaboración con John Deere.
Un legado construido sobre apellidos familiares
El Grupo Wirtgen era una empresa alemana de capital privado antes de ser adquirida por John Deere en 2017. En 1996 había incorporado ya la empresa de pavimentación asfáltica Vogele, y tres años después la firma de compactación de suelos y asfalto Hamm —fundada en 1836, un año antes que John Deere—. Kleemann se sumó al grupo en 2006, ampliando su presencia en el procesamiento de minerales con plantas móviles de trituración y cribado.
En 2014, el Grupo Wirtgen adquirió una participación del 70% en Benninghoven, incorporando plantas de mezcla de asfalto al ecosistema y completando así el ciclo de equipos para la construcción de carreteras, desde la mezcla y el pavimentado hasta el fresado y el reciclaje. Wirtgen America, fundada en 1984, cuenta actualmente con 300 empleados en su campus de Tennessee.
“Cada una de esas marcas lleva el nombre de una familia, igual que Deere”, ha dicho Jim McEvoy, CEO de Wirtgen America. “Contamos con una larga trayectoria de haber abierto camino en estos mercados, de encabezar su desarrollo y de ser muy innovadores en estos segmentos de productos.”
Tres máquinas en demostración
La demostración de Tennessee incluyó maquinaria y tecnologías en tres áreas: fresado, pavimentación y compactación de asfalto.
Fresadora Wirtgen
La fresadora elimina superficies antiguas de asfalto u hormigón mediante tecnologías de automatización y guiado digital que mejoran la precisión, la eficiencia y el seguimiento del rendimiento. El modelo W210XF dispone de un tambor de corte de 2,5 metros de ancho y ocho cámaras que refuerzan el control de la operación.
“Los diagnósticos sencillos, las instrucciones intuitivas en pantalla y los componentes de respaldo integrados en la máquina facilitan su funcionamiento continuo”, ha explicado Lamarque.
El sistema WPT Milling registra los datos de trabajo y de la máquina para la facturación y el seguimiento de las emisiones. Por su parte, Smart Level Pro es un sistema de fresado diferencial integrado que escanea la superficie antes de actuar.
El proceso comienza con un escaneo de alta velocidad de la carretera existente, sin necesidad de cortarla al tráfico, a cargo del propio cliente o de un topógrafo externo. El modelo digital resultante se georreferencia mediante GNSS. A partir de ahí, el perfil se ajusta a las especificaciones y se carga en el Centro de Operaciones y Planificador de Trabajo de John Deere, lo que permite verificar las profundidades de corte con antelación y ahorrar tiempo frente al fresado de prueba tradicional.
Con dos receptores John Deere StarFire conectados por red móvil, la fresadora opera con precisión sobre la profundidad y la pendiente de diseño previstas. El sistema de guiado GNSS StarFire es la tecnología satelital de Deere que garantiza el posicionamiento, la alineación y el guiado de alta precisión durante todo el proceso. Mill Assist, por su parte, optimiza el rendimiento de la máquina en tiempo real, con el consiguiente ahorro de combustible y reducción de emisiones.
Pavimentadora de asfalto Vogele
Las extendedoras de asfalto de Vogele incorporan tecnologías de automatización, nivelación y manipulación de materiales de alta especialización. Smart Pave es su sistema digital de control y automatización, mientras que AutoTrac mantiene con precisión la dirección de desplazamiento y el ancho de pavimentación. RoadScan, por su parte, es el sistema de imágenes térmicas y medición de temperatura sin contacto que se instala directamente sobre la pavimentadora.
Rodillo compactador de asfalto Hamm
El rodillo de doble tambor de Hamm compacta el asfalto fresco hasta alcanzar la densidad objetivo necesaria para su durabilidad a largo plazo, con un sistema de monitorización en tiempo real y tecnología de compactación inteligente que previene la compactación excesiva. El equipo combina vibración y oscilación, y los sistemas Smart Compact Pro y Track Assist permiten a los operarios trabajar de forma más eficiente y segura, con la documentación necesaria para acreditar el cumplimiento de las especificaciones ante contratistas y autoridades.
La compactación inteligente integra mapeo por GPS, sensores de temperatura de la superficie del asfalto y un acelerómetro que mide la rigidez del material.
De la automatización a la autonomía
Jason Ambroson, vicepresidente y director general de Wirtgen International, ha subrayado que la integración de las mismas tecnologías, conectividad y sensores en las distintas máquinas permite a los clientes ser más productivos con menos personal y menos recursos.
“Estamos pasando de la automatización a la autonomía”, ha afirmado.
La demostración de Tennessee pretendía ilustrar precisamente ese recorrido: la conexión de máquinas, datos y operadores en un único sistema integrado.
ChatGPT, de OpenAI, ha superado los 1.000 millones de usuarios activos mensuales en mayo de 2026, convirtiéndose en la aplicación que más rápido ha logrado ese hito en la historia, según ha estimado la empresa de análisis Sensor Tower.
En su informe State of Mobile Report 2026, Sensor Tower ha constatado que ChatGPT ha llegado a ese umbral en solo tres años desde su lanzamiento, por delante del ritmo que marcaron en su momento aplicaciones como Google Maps, TikTok, Instagram o YouTube. La cifra supone un respaldo notable para OpenAI en la pugna por la supremacía de los chatbots de IA, en la que compite con Claude, de Anthropic, y Grok, de X.
En abril, OpenAI reveló que había alcanzado los 900 millones de usuarios activos semanales en diciembre de 2025 y que el uso de su API supera los 15.000 millones de tokens por minuto, aunque la firma no ha publicado estadísticas oficiales para 2026.
Claude gana terreno
Sensor Tower también ha destacado el avance de Claude. A finales del segundo trimestre de 2026, la aplicación de Anthropic ha alcanzado los 56 millones de usuarios activos mensuales, un crecimiento interanual del 640% que contrasta con el 62% registrado por ChatGPT en el mismo período.
El informe también recoge que los usuarios estadounidenses de ChatGPT que instalaron Claude en los tres primeros meses de 2026 redujeron su uso de la aplicación de OpenAI en un 5% al mes de la instalación, respecto al promedio de los ocho meses anteriores.
“El crecimiento de Claude podría deberse a los avances en el modelo registrados durante el último año, o al aumento de la confianza del consumidor tras el anuncio de la asociación de OpenAI con el Departamento de Guerra en el primer trimestre de 2026″, ha señalado Sensor Tower.
Anthropic ha presentado esta semana su solicitud para salir a bolsa en Estados Unidos; se espera que OpenAI haga lo propio próximamente. Grok, la aplicación de Elon Musk, contaba con 50 millones de usuarios activos mensuales, según los mismos datos.
La Comisión Europea (CE) ha presentado un paquete de medidas destinado a impulsar las ambiciones del continente en torno a los semiconductores, la inteligencia artificial, la nube y el código abierto, con el objetivo de reforzar la autonomía digital del bloque.
La CE sostiene que estas medidas ayudarán a Europa a consolidarse como referente en investigación, desarrollo y adopción de la inteligencia artificial, reduciendo al mismo tiempo su dependencia tecnológica de Estados Unidos y Asia.
El paquete se articula en cuatro áreas. La primera es la Ley de Chips 2.0, actualización de la norma en vigor desde 2023, que pretende asegurar la base de semiconductores para las ambiciones europeas en materia de IA agilizando la concesión de permisos, profundizando la cooperación con socios afines e introduciendo un sello de excelencia para las regiones europeas de semiconductores.
La segunda es una nueva Ley de Desarrollo de la Nube y la IA, orientada a facilitar la construcción de centros de datos, simplificar los requisitos para su despliegue en toda la Unión Europea (UE) e introducir un marco único para evaluar la soberanía en materia de nube e IA. El objetivo es triplicar la capacidad de los centros de datos europeos en los próximos cinco a siete años.
La tercera área es el código abierto: la CE quiere reforzar la autonomía digital ampliando las alternativas en áreas prioritarias, invirtiendo en competencias, empresas emergentes e infraestructura digital, y promoviendo un mayor uso del código abierto en la administración pública.
La cuarta y última se centra en la digitalización del sistema energético europeo, con el compromiso de definir una hoja de ruta que garantice la integración de los centros de datos al tiempo que se desarrollan modelos de IA soberanos y seguros.
Soberanía tecnológica
Ursula von der Leyen, presidenta de la Comisión, ha advertido de que Europa “no puede permitirse depender de otros para las tecnologías que mantienen en funcionamiento nuestros hospitales, estables nuestras redes energéticas y seguros nuestros servicios”.
“Se trata de proteger a nuestros ciudadanos, defender nuestros intereses y tomar nuestras propias decisiones. Europa cuenta con el talento, la excelencia en investigación, la base industrial y el Mercado Único. Juntos, debemos transformar estas fortalezas en soberanía tecnológica.”
La propuesta deberá ser negociada por el Parlamento Europeo y el Consejo de la UE antes de entrar en vigor. La Comisión también iniciará un proceso de consulta con los Estados miembros.
La financiación hasta 2028 se canalizará a través de las subvenciones existentes, mientras que la correspondiente a períodos posteriores quedará sujeta al próximo presupuesto de la UE.
La CE había estimado previamente una inversión combinada público-privada de 120.000 millones de euros para 2035 destinada a revitalizar la industria de semiconductores del continente.
Dashlane said that attackers mounted a coordinated hacking campaign against a large base of its users in an attempt to recover as many encrypted password vaults as possible. The password manager provider said fewer than 20 personal user vaults were downloaded before it shut down the operation.
In a campaign that started Sunday, the unknown threat actor abused the mechanism that allows Dashlane users to add new devices, such as computers or phones, to their accounts. By abusing Dashlane's programming interfaces for device enrollment, the attackers sent requests to large numbers of existing users’ registered email addresses. In an update published Thursday, Dashlane wrote:
The threat actor targeted the API endpoints for device registration and used a brute force attack to send a large volume of automated requests to those endpoints.
In response, Dashlane’s automated security systems operated as intended, triggering an automatic lockout of the targeted accounts to protect those users. Before the attack was fully mitigated, the threat actor was able to brute force and generate valid tokens for fewer than 20 personal plan customers, allowing them to register a new device on those accounts and download copies of users’ encrypted vaults.
The flow and strategy of the attack
When a user installs the Dashlane app on a new device and attempts to enroll it in their existing account, Dashlane first verifies the account holder's identity. This verification is completed by sending a one-time six-digit token to the user’s registered email address (or, for users who have enabled two-factor authentication, by validating a six-digit code generated by their authentication app).
Login
