Greetings, Arsians, and welcome to the great Ars Technica 2026 reader survey! It has been almost four years since we last ran a big site-wide survey like this, where we ask our readers—you!—what you like about the work we do and what we could perhaps improve on. This kind of check-in is absolutely vital to ensuring we're steering the ship properly, and we take the results very seriously. (The last time we did this, we got several thousand responses, and that's incredibly valuable data for us!)

You don't have to have been a reader since 1998 to weigh in, either. Whether you're a first-time reader, an old grizzled forum veteran, a front page comment maven, a newbie sysadmin, or a CEO, we want to hear what you have to say, no matter who you are. The only requirement is that you're a human! (Aliens are welcome as well, though we didn't really define any demographic categories for extraterrestrial beings. We'll tackle this issue if it comes up, I suppose.) There are a few text fields. Yes, we will read what you write there!

To assay, perchance to sing

Fortunately, this isn't a long survey—just a handful of targeted questions. We're not collecting any personally identifying information, and responses will only be viewed in aggregate. None of the data will be analyzed by anyone except us, and none of it will be sold or otherwise distributed outside of Ars. (We're using SurveyMonkey for our survey platform, the same as we have many times in the past.)

Read full article

Comments

Comments

Impact Statement: Starting at 21:45 UTC on 15 June 2026, a subset of Azure customers leveraging services which depend upon MCR (Microsoft Container Registry) for storing images may experience 401 authentication errors for requests attempting to pull Microsoft images from mcr.microsoft.com.Current Status: We detected this issue via internal service monitoring upon identifying a spike of 401 errors. We’ve identified a potential underlying factor to be a recent update which introduced a code regression, and we've completed roll out of a hotfix to address the code regression and mitigate impact for affected customers. We are closely monitoring internal telemetry to validate full mitigation and prevent further occurrences. The next update will be provided within 60 minutes, or as events warrant.

As enterprises scale initiatives, the cost of developing, deploying and operating generative artificial intelligence models rises significantly. The shift toward AI agents can further increase costs becausse of poor architecture, limited operational maturity and weak governance. Information technology leaders can adopt these 10 best practices for optimizing costs, enabling them to achieve quicker business value […]

The post 10 best practices for optimizing generative and agentic AI costs appeared first on SiliconANGLE.

Comments

A critical vulnerability chain dubbed SearchLeak in Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise could allow attackers to steal sensitive data from a target's mailbox, OneDrive, or SharePoint account through a specially crafted URL. [...]