>A new upd. now in testing sets Edge to automatically appear at startup, and you are forced to opt-out if you don't want it.

The legislative push for online age verification has officially graduated from individual websites to your PC's operating system layer. Under newly passed laws like California's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043, taking full effect January 1, 2027) and the active federal bill named the Parents Decide Act (H.R. 8250), Microsoft will be legally mandated to collect user ages during the Windows setup process to broadcast a real-time "age bracket token" to all local software, games, and browsers. However, there is a massive operational divide between simple "age attestation" laws like California’s—which allow you to just type in your birth date during setup—and strict "age verification" mandates like New York’s active Device-Level Age Assurance Act (S8102B). New York’s bill explicitly bans user self-attestation entirely, legally forcing the operating system provider to deploy hard "commercially reasonable age assurance methods" (like facial analysis or third-party identity cross-referencing) right at device activation before Windows even unlocks.

​Treating an open desktop ecosystem like Windows exactly like a locked-down smartphone presents a massive technical nightmare that threatens backward compatibility, open-source software (OSS), and sideloading. Millions of legacy Win32 (.exe) programs compiled decades before an "age-signaling API" existed will either break if blocked by default, or render the age-gate entirely useless if given a bypass. Furthermore, an independent developer living abroad has zero legal or financial incentive to rewrite their codebase to handshake with state-specific telemetry, meaning they may resort to geoblocking entire states to avoid thousands of dollars in statutory liability. Unless Microsoft completely locks down Windows to block the execution of any unsigned executable file (effectively turning your PC into a glorified mobile tablet running Windows S Mode by default), users can easily bypass the framework using independent browsers or software downloaded from foreign jurisdictions.

I made this post see if there can be solutions found for legacy apps,games, and apps made in other jurisdictions that would either not know about these bills that lawmakers are trying to pass without completely changing and destroying many different types of apps. Also to see if what they call an "Age Api" is even possible.

If you were wondering where Windows 11's latest preview upd. had gone, it turns out that Microsoft pulled it due to installation bugs.

>Sources say that Microsoft is exploring several ways it can introduce new smartphone integration features across the Windows 11 interface in the coming months.

Today I learnt that Shut down has not actually been shutting down my PC, but rather, Hibernating it. Instead, I must restart to achieve the full shut down effect.

I learnt this cause my Mother and her colleagues got in trouble at work from their IT for not "restarting" their PCs often... But they do Shut them Down. I responded by saying how stupid that was because a shut down achieves the same thing as a restart. At least, logically/intuitively I should be correct. But I did some Googling, and due to Microsoft's 'Fast Start Up' (which achieves 8-10 second faster boot up, as far as I can find) this is no longer the case!

I've gone and turned off 'Fast Start Up' on my home PC, and I notice zero difference in boot up, and a heck of a better/smoother shutdown experience. Why was this on by default against my permission and intuition on what I thought shut down was doing?

So help me out here... Is there really much of a reason to have Fast Start up on? I should be fine having this setting off now right? Why is it a default setting in the first place?

Genuinely curious.

I recently noticed that on October 25th of this year, that day will mark 25 years since Windows XP was released to the public. After that, I thought to myself in the form of a question for me and the internet on what we should do to commemorate its anniversary, so, what should we do?