Pin to Quick Access

By default, File Explorer opens to Quick Access. This contains a whole bunch of stuff (folders) as well as stuff that has been "pinned" to Quick Access.  Any folder of interest can be "pinned to quick access" using a simple right click. A pinned folder can be easily "unpinned" using the self-same right click action.

ai.exe - what is it?

ai.exe is part of Microsoft Office (now known as Microsoft 365 apps) and handles local AI requirements for Office applications like Word, Outlook and PowerPoint. An example would be auto suggestions and predictive text in Word. It is not specifically tied to the operating system version.

Basic Microsoft Edge Shortcuts

Control-Tab    Enables you to scroll through open tabs

Control-Shift-Tab    Reverse scroll but is quite an unnatural set of keys to press

Control-J    View your downloads

Control-H    View your browsing history

OOXML versus OpenDocument

When configuring Microsoft Word on a new machine, you will be prompted if you wish to have Office Open XML (informally OOXML) or OpenDocument (extension .odt for text) as the default format.

Choose the former if you want to be more Microsoft-centric and use all features of Microsoft's ecosystem, choose the latter if you need interoperability with applications like LibreOffice.

OOXML started out as an XML format for Excel and later extended to other applications such as Word.

Dawn of the NPU

Stand down GPUs, this is the dawn of the NPUs. NPUs are neural processing units, which simulate the neural networks in nature. It is characterized by parallel processing, performing trillions of operations per second. It is more efficient (uses less power) for AI tasks than a CPU or GPU.

ipconfig's DNS features

ipconfig /displaydns

displays the contents of the DNS Resolver Cache (also known as the DNS cache). 

The DNS cache is a temporary DNS storage on your device holding already visited domain names.

Stuff you might see in there include some complicated microsoft.com related addresses under Record Name. Record type of 1 signifies an IP address (IPv4). Record type 2 (also known as a AAAA record) is an IPv6 address.  Record type 5 is an MX record (mail exchange). MX records show where mail for a domain should be routed to. Multiple MX records may exist for a single domain. Time to live is the time in seconds for the cache entry to expire.

These records represent the content of a DNS reply.

Black Point

What does "black point" mean in photo editing? This is a setting which controls the darkest parts of an image. Adjusting this can improve contrast and make colours stand out.