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On August 1, Special Operations Command (SOCOM) announced that the next plane in its inventory would be a single-engine prop aircraft. SOCOM will buy up to 75 AT-802U Sky Warden planes, built by L3Harris Technologies and Air Tractor. These planes will support special operations forces, like Delta Force or Navy SEALs, as they fight irregular wars.
The name of this program is “Armed Overwatch.” The contract announcement says it “will provide Special Operations Forces deployable, affordable, and sustainable crewed aircraft systems fulfilling close air support, precision strike, and armed intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, requirements in austere and permissive environments for use in irregular warfare operations in support of the National Defense Strategy.”
Irregular warfare is a broad term that is easier to define by what it doesn’t include. Regular warfare is when the uniformed soldiers of one nation fight the uniformed soldiers of another. These conflicts usually involve the whole range of conventional military forces, from rifles through tanks and artillery to fighter jets and bombers. Irregular warfare, by contrast, involves fighting against insurgencies, rebellions, and tracking down people linked to terror operations. It can also involve helping other countries’ militaries do the same.
For example, in 2003, the US invaded Iraq with a conventional war, which lasted until the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s military. Armed resistance afterwards to the American military and to the new government of Iraq became irregular warfare, and to this day the US deploys forces in the country to assist in training Iraq’s military in irregular warfare.
For SOCOM’s purposes, a plane that can support special operations forces doesn’t need to survive in a sky filled with hostile fighter jets or when the enemy brings dedicated anti-aircraft vehicles to the battle. Instead, what is most important is that the plane can fly easily, shoot what it needs to shoot, as well as take off and land if need be on rough runways and cleared fields, instead of dedicated airbases.
[Related: Navy SEALs could get new airborne backup. Here’s what the planes look like.]
Those characteristics, that rugged versatility, are likely why the Sky Warden won out over the four other planes SOCOM considered for the contract last summer. The contract initially awards $170 million, or about the price of two F-35A stealth jets, with a ceiling of $3 billion for the full fleet. L3Harris said in a statement that production will begin in 2023, for the initial lot of six Sky Wardens.
“We want to deliver game-changing, modular solutions to U.S. special operators for their hardest missions, and Sky Warden does just that,” Christopher E. Kubasik, CEO of L3Harris, said in a statement.
“Armed Overwatch” is a role that involves both scouting for targets and attacking enemies on the ground. While SOCOM considered planes that could also perform a transport role for the special operators, the Sky Warden is built to scout and to attack. To that end, the Sky Warden can carry over 8,000 lbs of payload while armored. The wings can carry a range of weapons, from 500-pound bombs to small missiles to sensor pods, and the center of the aircraft can host two heavier systems as well. The wing station can fit a gun, like a .50-caliber machine gun or a 20mm cannon. With a full load of sensors and weapons, the plane can take off on a runway of just 1,400 feet, and it can land on one 1,200 feet long. The tandem cockpit seats two pilots.
The AT-802 (note the lack of a “U,” which denotes the latest variant, the AT-802U, that SOCOM is getting) first flew in 1990, where its rugged airframe and heavy payload capacity made it an ideal crop duster. As a crop duster, the plane was used to spray crops on counter-narcotics missions, an action that sometimes saw the planes shot at by farmers defending their crops. “Years of coca crop eradication missions in South America resulted in the development of lightweight composite ballistic armor for the AT-802U cockpit ‘bathtub’ and engine compartment,” notes the Air Tractor page for the plane.
In other words, SOCOM is getting a plane with crop duster origins, and one that can be used for the military missions of special operators. The Sky Warden is armored against attack, provided the enemy it is facing is armed mostly with small arms, like machine guns and rifles.
This was a concern 13 years ago, when the Air Force announced a plan to purchase 100 such planes in 2009. Skeptics of the Air Force’s 2009 plan for a light attack plane similar to the Sky Warden noted at the time that insurgent forces could get portable and effective anti-air weapons that could threaten the aircraft. With the award of the Armed Overwatch contract this week, former Popular Science contributor Peter W. Singer, now a fellow at New America, revisited an article he wrote that year, tweeting, “And note, since writing that in 2009, the cropduster [Sky Warden-style plane] has not improved, while both the enemy capabilities and the unmanned alternative has obviously drastically improved.”
As nations like Germany and the United States offload old anti-air missiles to Ukraine for use in its war against Russia, the possibility exists that some of these weapons will make their way onto the black market. While old anti-air missiles may struggle against modern jets or be overkill for modern drones, they are perfectly suited for attacking planes like the Sky Warden. As SOCOM makes a big bet on how to fight irregular wars from the sky, it is also gambling that the enemies it finds will lack anti-air weapons, even as war makes those weapons more available.
Correction on August 3: This story has been updated to correct a typo that referred to the F-35 fighter jet as an F-25.
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Onedrive Will Get New Sharing Features Soon: Here’s What You Need To Know
OneDrive will get new sharing features soon: Here’s what you need to know
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Microsoft is preparing some big updates for OneDrive. As soon as the company revealed its roadmap for Office 365, we noticed a couple of interesting additions for every version of OneDrive, including OneDrive for Business and its web version.
Most of the improvements deal with OneDrive for Business’ sharing features. We’ve listed each notable change here, so you can find more information about the upcoming improvements in one place.
Simplified sharing from OneDrive for Business from the webMicrosoft will make the sharing experience in the web version of OneDrive for Business easier. The previously-established workflow of users emailing links or saving them to the clipboard will remain.
We’re updating the user experience for sharing files and folders in OneDrive for Business from the web. This new sharing experience simplifies the flow of emailing links to colleagues and guests and copying links to the clipboard. Like the original experience, the new experience presents two choices to users who want to share: type email addresses to send a link in email, or copy a link to the clipboard. Both the “Share” and “Get a link” command support all three types of links in OneDrive, including anonymous access links (accessible by anyone), company shareable links (accessible to those within your organization) and restricted links (accessible to a custom set of users both in and outside your organization).
The revamped feature allows users to easily choose their sharing method. Microsoft already started rolling out this feature and is expected to be completed in by the end of February.
Dedicated OneDrive for Business Admin ConsoleMicrosoft added a graphical user interface to the Office 365 Console to make management easier for admins.
One useful feature Microsoft will implement in the upcoming update is a success indicator for sending links. .
Today, when a user adds an ODB modern attachment, there’s no indication before sending that sharing with their recipients will work. We’re adding Sharing Tips to fix this by adding tips that warn you if sharing with your recipients will not work and provides a suggested action. In addition, Outlook will use the best URL for your situation – in most cases the Company sharing link.
Outlook on the web: OneDrive Sharing ImprovementsFinally, Microsoft will be introducing more access levels, like “anyone can edit” and “anyone in my organization can edit.” That way, group admins will be in full control over users’ assignments within the project.
Today, modern attachments are shared by default with “recipients can edit” access and you can switch to “recipients can view” access before you send your mail. With this update, you’ll also be able to switch to other access levels such as “anyone can edit” and “anyone in my organization can edit.
Microsoft has already started rolling out these features to all eligible users. However, as the rollout is gradual, not everyone will get them at the same time but they should arrive by the end of this month.
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Cat S62 Pro Rugged Android Phone Gets A Us Release Price
Cat S62 Pro rugged Android phone gets a US release price
Cat Phone’s ruggedized S62 Pro smartphone has arrived in the US, offering a tougher option if you’re prone to dropping devices or smashing screens. Announced last year, the new Android handset packs midrange specifications into a seriously resilient casing, without necessarily looking like a rubber brick at the same time.
On the front there’s a 5.7-inch display running at 1080p resolution, while inside there’s a Snapdragon 660 chipset paired with 6GB of memory and 128GB of storage. It’s running Android 10 out of the box, with an Android 11 update in the pipeline and three years of security patches.
There’s a 4,000 mAh battery – smaller than the 4,500 mAh pack in the old Cat S61, but Cat says it should still last for 1-2 days of general use – and a microSD slot. No 5G, but you do get 4G LTE Cat 13, and unlike the old phone the S62 Pro has a fingerprint sensor. For the camera, the 12-megapixel sensor is from Sony’s line-up, with an f/1.8 lens.
Of course, that’s not the only sensor the phone puts on the back. There’s a new FLIR Lepton 3.5 thermal camera sensor, with four times the number of thermal pixels – 19,200 versus 4,800 – compared to the old Cat S61. That helps the Cat S62 Pro with a 30-percent improvement in thermal camera sharpness, and a 10-percent wider field of view.
A new MyFLIR Pro app includes “hottest” and “coldest” markets, image annotation, isotherms, and custom alarms. It can also be used to highlight particular areas of interest, and then produce a PDF for distribution. By tweaking the MSX and VividIR image processing it’s possible to pull out a lot more detail from the end shot, Cat says.
While offering a bigger screen than the S61, the S62 Pro is actually slightly thinner and lighter. It complies with MIL-SPEC-810H, for thermal ranges between -25°C (-13°F) to 55°C (131°F) for up to 24 hours, resistance to humidity and salt mist, and Category 4 vibration testing. Cat says you can drop the phone repeatedly, onto steel, from almost six feet up, and it’ll survive: even if it lands on the side or a corner.
There’s IP68 and IP69 ingress protection from water, with the S62 Pro handling up to 1.5 meters of water for 35 minutes, and the display gets Corning Gorilla Glass 6 protection. Cat even recesses that toughened glass between a protective ridge, for even more resilience, and the body is fully settled with waterproof connectors, a metal frame, and non-slip rubberized TPU rear housing.
If it’s COVID-19 or similar you’re worried about, you can wash the S62 Pro with soap and detergents, alcohol wipes and other disinfectants, and it’ll even hold up to bleach and other common chemicals.
Clearly, this isn’t the phone for everybody, but if your life or work takes you into challenging environments – or you’re just plain clumsy – then the Cat S62 Pro seems to offer the benefits associated with ruggedized devices yet without a lot of the chunky, ugly drawbacks we’ve come to assume of them. It’ll be available in April 2023 in the US, unlocked, priced at $699.
Google Maps Is About To Get Personal: All The New Features Coming Soon
Google Maps is about to get personal: all the new features coming soon
Google Maps is about to be revamped with a more personal experience, Google has revealed, helping users figure out where to eat, where to stop for drinks, and more. The company aims to eliminate the current seemingly endless scrolling involved with “recommended restaurants,” replacing it with faster, smarter suggestions. In coming months, users will see a new Explore tab and more.
According to Google, the navigation app’s upcoming redesigned Explore tab will serve as a “hub” where users find unique places nearby, as well as places that are new to them. The tab will present options based on the area the user is exploring within the map, the company explains. The section will also tie in data from local experts, show where notable “tastemakers” are at, factor in trusted publications, and more.
The content isn’t limited to just restaurants, of course. Google demonstrated the Explore tab with things like annual arts and crafts fairs, marathons, sightseeing destinations, and similar. Options are also broken up by category, such as “dive bars” and places where literary notables visited. These things tie in other products via links; users can, for example, tap “Add to calendar” to add a suggested event to their calendar.
The Explore tab isn’t passive, says Google, instead actively helping the user keep track of what they’ve done on the various lists. For example, users who visit the top restaurants for the destination will see them marked as such in the app, helping narrow down future activities.
Google heavily emphasized AI and intelligent features in its keynote today, and we see that mission highlighted in its upcoming Google Maps update. The app will soon show users their “match” — that is, how likely they are to like a suggestion alongside an explanation about why it may be a match.
That data, as you’ve likely guessed, is based on Google’s machine learning technology, which uses what the company knows about you to make the determination. Various pieces of data are factored into the rating, such as what you’ve rated other restaurants in the past, where you’ve already been, the drink and food preferences you’d have already given Google, and more.
The match is presented next to the listing’s start rating; users see a Chrome-like circle next to a percentage reading “Your match.” Tap that match and a card will give brief information about why you got that rating — maybe you’ve already expressed interest in Mexican food, for example, and Google thinks this new place fits the bill.
The changes continue from there. Google Maps is adding a feature that helps groups of people coordinate their interests, each person contributing to the creation of a shortlist of choices. Users then vote on those choices, narrowing it down to a single place. Reservations for the chosen destination can be made directly from Google Maps.
Finally, Google Maps has a new “For you” tab in which the user finds things happening in the regions they’re into. The user has an option to follow specific neighborhoods and other locations; by doing so, For you will offer places to check out the next time you decide to venture into the region or you’re setting up an outing.
Google promises the new Google Maps features will be arriving for everyone on Android and iOS around the globe “in coming months.”
A New Way To Get To Space
World View Experience says it will take passengers to the stratosphere by 2023. Illustration by World View Experience
When Alan Eustace lifted off into space from the New Mexico desert this past October, it was with a quiet whoosh, and a slight jostle of his harness. The 57-year-old computer scientist from Google—outfitted in a 260-pound pressurized space suit—dangled solo from a polyethylene balloon as thin as a dry-cleaning bag. As the balloon rose steadily into the air, the small bubble of helium inside began to expand, and with each mile the balloon changed shape. At first it undulated skyward, limp and oblong, like a jellyfish. Then it grew into a soft, bulbous teardrop. Finally, as Eustace neared his destination, 25 miles above the planet’s surface, it became perfectly firm and rounded, a shimmering object the size of a football stadium. Above him spanned the blackness of space. Beneath him lay what has long drawn humans to these heights: the soul-altering view of the curvature of Earth.
To most, Eustace’s flight seemed the antithesis of space travel, which since the dawn of the space age has been synonymous with the fiery roar of a rocket. The first private companies racing to take paying customers to the edge of space—Virgin Galactic, XCOR Aerospace, and Blue Origin—promise the kind of thrill ride experienced by astronauts. But there’s an alternate space race taking shape, one whose selling point is slow and serene. A handful of startups are rushing to pioneer tourist trips to the stratosphere beneath enormous balloons. “Balloons are a beautiful mechanism for taking off,” Eustace says. “You’re perfectly balanced; it’s perfectly quiet; there’s no vibration as you’re going up.” Once at altitude, passengers will drift with the winds as they peer from the comfort of a pressurized capsule. After a few hours, they will glide back to Earth beneath a wing-shaped parafoil.
“It’s going to be the ultimate Facebook status update: the entire family in space.”For one company, Eustace’s StratEx mission was proof of principle—a “one-man version” of stratospheric balloon tourism, says Taber MacCallum. He and his partner, Jane Poynter, headed Paragon Space Development Corporation, which managed Eustace’s flight plan and built his life-support system. The couple then started World View Experience, a Tucson, Arizona, operation that intends to be the first to take customers to 100,000 feet, or 19 miles, for $75,000 a head. They project the maiden flight will take place by 2023.
Zero2Infinity in Barcelona and Chinese startup Space Vision also anticipate flying passengers in the next few years. They are selling tickets for about $125,000 and $80,000, respectively. The fees are steep, but not when compared with $250,000 for a seat on Virgin Galactic’s suborbital spaceplane, or the $50 million broker Space Adventures charges for a weeklong jaunt to the International Space Station.
Altogether, balloons could offer a more inclusive form of space tourism. “It’s a very slow, gentle ride up and a slow, gentle ride back, and you get to be up there for hours,” MacCallum says. Without the gravitational forces of takeoff and landing, the flight comes with minimal health restrictions. Motion sickness is unlikely to be an issue. Couples might get married in near-space, or celebrate a grandparent’s birthday. World View is already taking $7,500 deposits to secure seats on future flights. “We’ve had families sign up and buy the whole capsule,” MacCallum says. “You can take your parents and children. It’s going to be the ultimate Facebook status update: the entire family in space.”
A helium-filled balloon will carry Zero2Infinity’s tourist pod to 22 miles above Earth. Illustration by Abaco Digital/Ignacio Ferrando/Zero2Infinity
In 2002, two years before Scaled Composites claimed the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight, Zero2Infinity’s founder, José Mariano López-Urdiales, wrote a paper for grad school entitled “The Role of Balloons in the Future Development of Space Tourism.” In it, he calculated stratospheric ballooning could be a $10 billion-a-year industry. Much of the technology required to send tourists to such altitudes—the balloons, the helium fuel, the pressurized capsules—had been well proved, López-Urdiales noted. It’s also relatively affordable and easy to procure.
Whereas Virgin Galactic plans to soar to nearly 330,000 feet—just past the 62-mile mark widely considered the threshold of space—balloons will top out at just over 100,000 feet. The difference is not as significant as it might seem. “At that altitude, you’ve got 99 percent of the atmosphere underneath you,” says former space-shuttle commander Mark Kelly, now the director of flight operations for World View. “You’re essentially in a vacuum. You’re in the blackness of space.” He agrees with López-Alegria that balloons pose less risk. “If you can take the complexity out of getting people to that vantage point,” he says, “at least theoretically you can do it a lot safer.”
Physicist Auguste Piccard prepares to make his second balloon trip to the stratosphere in 1932. SSPL/Getty Images
Like Kittinger and Baumgartner before him, Eustace floated briefly in the stratosphere, taking in a view he calls “marvelous.” As he remembers now, “It’s beautiful watching how the light diffuses through the different levels of the atmosphere.” And then Eustace released his balloon and fell back to Earth protected by only his space suit. His body reached 822 miles per hour, exceeding the speed of sound, before the atmosphere thickened and a parachute deployed to slow his descent. To succeed at ushering in a new form of balloon-based tourism, companies will have to figure out a way to get customers not only up, but also down.
A balloon ride to the stratosphere will be a three-part act: the launch, the pleasant cruise at altitude, and the trip back to Earth. The first part should be straightforward. For its commercial flights, World View plans to use a balloon that’s more than 400 feet in diameter—the same size as the one that carried Eustace. (Though it will be towing a 9,000-pound tourist capsule, the balloon doesn’t need to ascend as high.) Because of the StratEx mission, World View’s team has practice launching it.
Passengers in World View’s capsule (here, a mock-up) will have Internet access for uploading photos. Courtesy of World View Experience
Zero2Infinity has been launching unmanned balloons as a test for two different business ventures: stratospheric tourism and a commercial satellite delivery system. It’s also designed a doughnut-shaped craft that it plans to adapt for both applications. The version that will carry tourists, called a Bloon, will be big enough to hold two pilots and four passengers. The company has so far built a prototype half that size and used it to send a small humanoid robot to near-space. (“In the old days it would have been a dog or a monkey,” López-Urdiales says.) Equipped with cameras and sensors, the robot helped the engineers at Zero2Infinity understand the passenger experience. When the robot looked through the windows, which ring the outside wall, reflections marred the view. As a result, the window’s position will likely change, López-Urdiales says.
World View envisions an oblong capsule with viewing ports on each side. About the size of a small Winnebago, it will have seats for six passengers, a pilot, and a crew member. Passengers will need to be buckled in for liftoff and landing, but most of the ride will be a casual sail, like a skiff gliding across the surface of a lake in a light breeze. Although winds at 100,000 feet can reach 130 miles per hour, the high speed won’t be perceptible. That’s because Earth, which provides the only reference point, will appear to barely move. The capsule will have a bar and a bathroom, MacCallum says, and the crew will double as bartenders and tour guides.
Both MacCallum and López-Urdiales agree that balloon tourism should provide a shirtsleeve environment throughout the flight. “The goal is to have no training, no space suits,” MacCallum says. “This will be very similar to a commercial-airline flight, where you’re given a briefing and off you go.” But outside the pressurized capsule, the environment is lethal. Exposure would mean near-instant death. For that reason, the companies will have to decide how to balance comfort with safety in the event of an emergency.
The capsule will have a bar and a bathroom, MacCallum says, and the crew will double as bartenders and tour guides.“At the very least the pilot should be wearing a space suit,” says Art Thompson, whose aerospace company, Sage Cheshire, built the pressurized capsule that carried Baumgartner to the stratosphere. “If you have an issue with the craft, you want the pilot to be able to be in control.” The smartest strategy, Thompson says, might be to convince tourists to wear suits too. Of course, space suits require training, and looking like an astronaut might not have as much appeal as being able to easily sip a cocktail or hold your kid’s hand at 100,000 feet. At this point, the companies just seem to be banking on their ability to get the capsule down if a problem is detected—no awkward garments or free-fall skills required.
The third phase of the journey, the return, will be the most difficult. So World View is now heavily focused on refining the parafoils that will deliver the capsules to Earth. “We want to have enough cross-range to be able to fly to an airstrip and gently land in a predetermined place,” MacCallum says. “Doing that from 100,000 feet has never been done.” Because the air at that altitude is so thin, many doubted it was possible. But the company has now flown unmanned parafoils from 100,000 feet three times, each with a payload of about 100 pounds. This summer they plan to step it up by a factor of 10, testing the GPS-guided system with a 1,000-pound payload over the southwestern United States. “Assuming all that goes well, by the end of this year we’ll be at full-scale flight with a 9,000-pound capsule and commensurately large parafoil,” MacCallum says.
One focus of Zero2Infinity’s upcoming flights, also scheduled for this year, will be to test the high-speed telemetry link that will beam live video down from the capsule. Another arm of the company focuses on developing huge parafoils that could act as rescue systems for traditional aircraft. While they would be much larger than the ones eventually used for tourist capsules, having two applications for the technology accelerates the development while reducing the risk and cost, López-Urdiales says.
During tourist trips, the parafoils will be guided at least partially by pilots, and so both companies will need to conduct manned test flights. Some of those test pilots will likely be former NASA astronauts. Kelly says that people who have flown the space shuttle, like him, won’t be starting from scratch. The shuttle was also a glider that made an unpowered descent. Similar to a parafoil and a capsule, it encountered a lot of drag for the amount of lift it could create. To train, Kelly will spend time this summer jumping out of airplanes and learning to fly a small parafoil. Though he’s in charge of assembling a team of World View pilots, he expects that he’ll complete at least some of the early manned test flights himself, as well as serve as pilot on the first commercial trip to the stratosphere.
The simplicity of World View’s vision—at least compared with rocket flight—is what attracted Kelly to the project, he says. Potential tourists will likewise be drawn for the same reason, in hopes of experiencing the same payoff. Before he went to space for the first time, Kelly was sure the most remarkable thing would be floating in zero gravity. “That wasn’t the case,” he says now. “The biggest takeaway is looking at the planet with your own eyes—a round ball just floating there in the cosmos.”
The Ride of Your Life Stratospheric BalloonStratospheric Balloon
Cost: $75,000
You board the capsule a couple of hours before dawn. The monstrous polyethelyne balloon that will lift you into the stratosphere towers in the air above. You choose a seat, but it doesn’t really matter—they all swivel for a 360-degree view. After a five-minute briefing from the pilot, a former astronaut, the craft begins to rise.
The ascent is slow and steady, averaging about 11 mph. You barely feel it. As the helium inside the balloon expands, the shape transforms from a long, thin teardrop into a taut, rounded object. After an hour and a half, the balloon reaches 100,000 feet. You’re free to walk around, use the restroom, or have a cocktail.
The craft drifts at this altitude. Its movement is gentle; the pilots refer to it as “sailing.” They point out constellations and planets. Soon, the sunrise begins, illuminating the winding scar of the Grand Canyon 19 miles below. Your pilot describes his own first experience with the so-called overview effect, the emotional shift in perspective that comes with gazing down at Earth. You pull out your phone and snap a picture, a selfie from the stratosphere.
After two hours, the pilot vents helium from the balloon to begin a descent. He then sets the balloon free, leaving the capsule hanging from a 100-foot-wide parasail. It begins a directed glide. The wind pushed the balloon several hundred miles, and the parafoil will make up most of that distance on the return. The pilot’s attention is focused on flying—this is the part of the trip he has trained for. The sensation is similar to being in a small, perfectly silent airplane. The swooping descent takes less than an hour, delivering you to an airfield four to five hours after you lifted off.
Rocket-Powered PlaneRocket-Powered Plane
Carrier: XCOR Aerospace Cost: $100,000
This article was originally published in the August 2023 issue of Popular Science, under the title “Wish You Were Here.”
Windows 10 Will Soon Reserve 7Gb Of Space For Updates
Why Is This Happening?In order for Windows to install updates onto your system, it must first download them onto your computer. Once the update is downloaded and safe on your hard drive, it can then be installed the next time you restart your computer. The problem is you need enough room to actually download the update. If you have 1GB of space free, and an update takes up 3GB of space, you don’t have any room to get the update!
Microsoft is aiming to solve this by automatically locking away 7GB of space dedicated to Windows updates, so users will always have enough room for an update. Hopefully, with this new update for Windows, computers will be designed around this limitation, and users won’t be locked out of updates.
What Does this Mean for My Hard Drive?Simple — you won’t be able to use 7GB of it! The section is a strict reservation, meaning you won’t be able to use it for your own needs. As a result, when the update drops, you may see your free storage space drop by 7GB as a result. This is very bad for anyone who already has issues getting 7GB free on their computer.
Is There Any Way to Disable It?Not only is this bad for people with low storage space, it’s bad for anyone who wants complete control over their hard drive. Who wants Microsoft telling them how much of their own free space they can use, anyway?
Unfortunately, given the fact that this feature is currently only on the test update branch, there’s no knowing if the solutions we have to fix this issue will carry over into the main branch. If the update drops and Microsoft doesn’t patch up the current means of defeating their reservation, the following steps should work.
1. Open regedit by pressing Win + R and typing “regedit” in the box that appears.
2. Go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionReserveManager.”
This should then free up the 7GB once again. Hopefully, Microsoft will allow users to turn off this feature via a more user-friendly option – that is, if they even intend for users to circumvent this limit in the first place.
Reservations on Reserved SpaceIn a bid to keep computer space free to download Windows updates, Microsoft will push to reserve 7GB of storage space dedicated to downloading update files. While this will smooth the update process, people aren’t pleased to hear that they’re being denied storage space without a clear, easy means of turning the feature off.
What do you think of this update? Will you miss 7GB of your storage space? Is this one step too far for Microsoft? Let us know below.
Simon Batt
Simon Batt is a Computer Science graduate with a passion for cybersecurity.
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