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Satya Nadella, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., speaks during an Economic Club of New York event in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018. Nadella discussed the responsibility tech companies need to take over the future of artificial intelligence.
Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Personal computers with Windows have made sounds to indicate errors since the 1980s. With Windows 11, Microsoft has revamped those sounds to make them less stressful.

Windows remains the world’s most popular operating system, accounting for about 14% of Microsoft’s $168 billion in annual revenue. But it isn’t always easy for Microsoft to keep its hundreds of millions of customers happy, as they have widely varying opinions of what Windows should be — including what it should sound like.

The designers of Windows 11 took inspiration from an approach called calm technology, which was described by two employees of the Xerox PARC research lab more than two decades ago. “Calmness is much needed in today’s world, and it tends to hinge on our ability to feel in control, at ease, and trustful,” Microsoft’s Christian Koehn and Diego Baca wrote in a blog post. “Windows 11 facilitates this through foundational experiences that feel familiar, soften formerly intimidating UI, and increase emotional connection.”

Calm technology also informed the development of the sounds of Windows 11, said Matthew Bennett, who crafted the sounds, following contributions to Windows 8 and Windows 10.

Windows 11 stands out from its predecessors and its competitors by allowing people to use one group of sounds to match with light visual themes, and a different group that goes along with dark themes. The sounds are similar, which means people can recognize them as they switch between modes, but slightly different. Applying a dark theme generally makes the sounds softer. They seem to echo, as if in a large room.

“The new sounds have a much rounder wavelength, making them softer so that they can still alert/notify you, but without being overwhelming,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. Just like we rounded UI [user interface] visually, we rounded our soundscape as well to soften the overall feel of the experience.”

People can change the default sounds by opening the Settings app and going to “Sound > More sound settings.” But plenty of people will keep using the default sounds, just as many people who open Microsoft Word will end up using the default font.

Bennett, who left Microsoft in February after 12 years at the company, spelled out several changes the company made to its system sounds with Windows 11 during the course of multiple interviews. (Each of the audio files below contains the new sound, followed by its Windows 10 predecessor.)

Default Beep

When something goes wrong — for example, you look for text on a website and it isn’t there — and your PC needs to give you a heads up, Windows 11 won’t make as much of a fuss as Windows 10. The new sound, comprising three rising notes, starts at a lower pitch than the trill that it replaces, and it doesn’t linger as long afterward, Bennett said.

The notes aren’t simply played by a piano or marimba. Bennett said the sounds are “digitally sculpted” and designed not to evoke a musical instrument. That way, they’re less likely to get negative associations in various cultures around the world, he said.

Calendar Reminder

Four rapid ascending notes let you know an event is coming up. The arrangement is vastly simpler than the seven-note predecessor, which Bennett has described as having a clear beginning, middle and end.

After Windows 10 arrived in 2015, people ran it in schools and offices, where background noise could deafen some of the Calendar Reminder sound. Then the coronavirus pandemic forced workers, teachers and students to stay home, where there might be fewer distractions. The new sound demands less attention in those environments.

Desktop Mail Notification

When you receive an email in Windows 11, you hear three quick notes going downward. The new version is slightly faster — the one in Windows 10 included four notes and sustained for a moment at the end — and registers a lower pitch.

It’s more of a gesture, reminiscent of a piece of mail arriving in an inbox, and less of a voice-like snippet. “I read it as, “Message for you,'” Bennett said.

Device Connect, Device Disconnect, Device Failed to Connect

These areas of the next generation of Windows refer back to the stripped-down effects that appeared in Windows Vista and remained available in Windows 7, Bennett said. Anytime you plugged a mouse, a joystick or another peripheral into a USB port, or removed it, or the computer didn’t recognize the device, those 2000s-era operating systems made two abbreviated, guttural noises.

Windows 10 veered from that concept a bit with additional notes and varying melodies. Each of the Windows 11 sounds goes back to the idea of two simple notes, albeit in a more friendly fashion than their predecessors from the 2000s.

An upward tone conveys that the connection worked.

Going down means you’ve successfully unplugged.

And two sounds imply an error, sort of like how parents who speak a variety of languages will quickly say “uh-uh” to warn their children not to do something, Bennett said.

Instant Message Notification, Message Nudge

Sounds for calendar events and emails can play frequently on Windows PCs, but sounds that indicate new instant messages are far less frequent, Bennett said.

But they’re still there, and in Windows 11, they’re simpler. Three descending notes go off to mark a new message, instead of a chirp that goes up and then down. The Windows 10 message sound was meant to stand out from the mail sound to reflect the different rhythm of messaging, Bennett said. Now that distinction is more subtle.

The point of the Message Nudge is to signal the arrival of a new message coming in through a program that’s you’re currently using, but perhaps in a different conversation, Bennett said. In Windows 11 you hear one note and then a slightly lower note. It’s shorter than the sharp Windows 10 sound, which amounts to a miniaturized version of the Instant Message Notification sound in that operating system.

Notification

This sound, which comes up in concert with certain “system toast” boxes on the side of the screen, has also received a makeover. There are two slightly ascending notes that are close together, instead of four notes that rise and then fall. The sound is shorter, and the final note isn’t sustained for so long.

Windows User Account Control

When a program asks for permission to make changes to your PC, Windows 11 shows a prominent dialog box on your screen and plays a sound. The outcome can have security implications, hence the notification.

In Windows 11 the sound is an up-down-up pattern that comes in at a lower pitch than the down-up-down chime. It’s less all-hands-on-deck and more you-might-want-to-check-this.

So far, much of the new feedback on the new sounds has been positive, after Microsoft began circulating Windows 11 builds to testers in June.

The company will release Windows 11 more widely later this year.

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Palantir sues former employees, says Percepta AI CEO set out to ‘pillage’ top developers

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Palantir sues former employees, says Percepta AI CEO set out to 'pillage' top developers

Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp attends the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 15, 2025.

Andrew Caballero-reynolds | Afp | Getty Images

Palantir expanded its lawsuit against two former employees on Thursday to include the CEO of their new artificial intelligence startup, Percepta AI.

In the suit, Palantir alleged that Percepta CEO and co-founder Hirsh Jain, co-founder Radha Jain, and a third employee, Joanna Cohen, violated their non-solicitation agreements, hiring top talent to create a competitive business.

Palantir and Percepta didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The three defendants are accused of attempting to “poach” executives and developers from their former company and “plunder Palantir’s valuable intellectual property.”

Cohen and Radha Jain, who were named in the original lawsuit filed in October, were previously senior engineers at Palantir. Hirsh Jain, an executive responsible for the company’s healthcare portfolio, was added as another defendant in the latest complaint.

Palantir said the defendants were “entrusted” with the company’s “crown jewels,” including source code, customer workflows and proprietary customer engagement strategies.

The former employees “brazenly disregarded their contractual and legal commitments to Palantir and instead chose a path of deception and unjust competition,” the plaintiffs said in the document, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Cohen and Radha Jain denied the initial allegations in a November filing, and agreed to stop working for Percepta during the proceedings.

The suit accused Hirsh Jain, who resigned from Palantir in August 2024, of an “aggressive campaign” to recruit other employees to join Percepta, and said the startup has already hired at least 10 former Palantir employees.

An alleged message written by Hirsh Jain in November 2024 read, “I’m down to pillage the best devs at palantir when they’re at their maximum richness.”

The complaint says Rhada Jain wrote another message saying, “God thinking about poaching is so fun.”

Palantir, which was co-founded by Peter Thiel, CEO Alex Karp and others, builds analytics software for companies and government agencies, including the U.S. military. The company’s stock price has soared more than tenfold since the end of 2023, lifting its market cap close to $450 billion.

Palantir also accused Cohen of sending herself highly confidential documents shortly after announcing her resignation from the company in March. Cohen allegedly took photos of sensitive information, the suit said, and downloaded the files onto her personal phone.

“At Percepta, they seek to succeed not through old-fashioned ingenuity and competition, but through outright theft and deceit,” Palantir said in the filing.

Among other things, Palantir is asking for the defendants to be forced to return any confidential information in their possession, and to avoid working at Percepta or venture backer General Catalyst for 12 months from the time of an order.

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Trump ‘sells out’ U.S. national security with Nvidia chip sales to China, Sen. Warren says

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Trump 'sells out' U.S. national security with Nvidia chip sales to China, Sen. Warren says

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on President Donald Trump’s nominees to lead the National Economic Council, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Housing Finance Agency, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 27, 2025.

Annabelle Gordon | Reuters

President Donald Trump‘s decision to let Nvidia sell its advanced H200 artificial intelligence chips to China “sells out American national security,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Thursday.

Warren also reiterated her call for Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to testify before Congress about the agreement, along with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

The senator’s fiery remarks on the Senate floor came three days after Trump announced on social media that the U.S. semiconductor giant Nvidia could sell the chips to “approved customers” in China, so long as the U.S. gets a 25% cut of the revenues.

The announcement drew concerns both from Democrats and some of Trump’s Republican allies, who have been vocal about protecting America’s hardware advantage over China in the race to AI superiority.

Warren, in Thursday’s remarks, urged Congress to pass bipartisan legislation that “reins in this administration” by imposing new chip export restrictions. Critics of the bill say it could undermine U.S. chipmakers’ competitiveness.

The Trump administration knows that China gaining access to the chips, which have previously been subject to export restrictions, “poses a serious threat to our technological leadership and national security,” Warren said on the Senate floor.

She noted that shortly before Trump announced his decision on the H200 chips on Monday, the Department of Justice touted a crackdown touted a crackdown on a “major China-linked AI tech smuggling network.”

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“So why did the President make this bad deal that sells out the American economy and sells out American national security?” she asked. “It’s simple: In the Trump administration, money talks.”

“Mr. Huang understands that in this administration, being able to cozy up to Donald Trump might be the most important corporate CEO skill of all,” Warren said.

She pointed to Huang attending a $1 million-per-plate dinner at Trump’s Florida home Mar-a-Lago, and Nvidia’s later donations to the president’s under-construction White House ballroom.

“Those are just the most obvious possible reasons to cut this deal,” Warren said, “and who knows what else Mr. Huang might have done behind closed doors to persuade President Trump and Secretary Lutnick into making this dangerous concession.”

CNBC has reached out to Nvidia for comment on the senator’s remarks.

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Musk says SpaceX report of 2026 IPO is ‘accurate’

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Musk says SpaceX report of 2026 IPO is 'accurate'

The Axiom-4 mission, with a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 rocket, lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, June 25, 2025.

Giorgio Viera | AFP | Getty Images

Elon Musk responded to the latest report that SpaceX is going public in 2026, calling it “accurate.”

The article from Ars Technica’s Eric Berger examined why this is the right time for Musk’s space venture to IPO, and said the rise of artificial intelligence and opportunities for data centers in space play an important role in the move.

“As usual, Eric is accurate,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X in response to Berger’s article.

Musk’s comment comes after multiple news outlets said that SpaceX was looking to go public in 2026, with The Information and Wall Street Journal both reporting last week on the likeliness of an IPO, as well as a new share sale valuing the company at about $800 billion.

Bloomberg said this week that the company was pursuing an IPO in 2026 and is looking to raise more than $30 billion.

Over the weekend, Musk said on X that reports of the $800 billion valuation were “not accurate” and addressed the amount his company gets from NASA.

“While I have great fondness for @NASA, they will constitute less than 5% of our revenue next year,” Musk wrote. “Commercial Starlink is by far our largest contributor to revenue. Some people have claimed that SpaceX gets ‘subsidized’ by NASA. This is absolutely false.”

SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Heading into 2026, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Musk look set to gain a powerful ally in the government’s space program.

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Jared Isaacman, who paid millions to lead two private spaceflights with SpaceX in 2021 and 2024, is likely to become the next NASA administrator and was voted through committee on Monday.

He now heads to a full Senate vote for confirmation.

SpaceX is a key contractor for NASA, but acting administrator Sean Duffy has criticized Musk’s space operation for being behind on the Artemis moon trip, which has seen several delays.

Musk lashed out at Duffy, accusing him on X of “trying to kill NASA!”

Duffy, who is the secretary of transportation, was handed the reins of the space program this summer by President Donald Trump, after he pulled Isaacman’s nomination following a clash with Musk.

Trump said at the time that Isaacman’s relationship with Musk represented a conflict of interest.

The renomination of Isaacman at the beginning of November signaled that the relationship between Trump and Musk was on the mend, and the Tesla CEO’s attendance at a White House dinner later that month solidified the return to camaraderie.

— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.

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