Enlarge (credit: Getty)

On March 29, 2022, CNN+, CNN's take on a video streaming service, debuted. On April 28, 2022, it shuttered, making it the fastest shutdown of any launched streaming service. Despite that discouraging superlative, CNN has plans for another subscription-based video streaming platform, Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday.

Mark Thompson, who took CNN's helm in August 2023, over a year after CNN+'s demise, spoke with FT about evolving the company. The publication reported that Thompson is "working on plans for a digital subscription streaming service." The executive told the publication that a digital subscription, including digital content streaming, is "a serious possibility," adding, "no decisions had been made, but I think it’s quite likely that we’ll end up there."

CNN++, or whatever a new CNN streaming package might be named, would not just be another CNN+, per Thompson.

Enlarge / The Huawei Pura 70 Ultra. That red ring around the camera lens is how far it moves. (credit: Huawei)

Huawei is still out there making phones, even if it has been shunned by the US government and the US-aligned tech ecosystem. The latest phone has a new name: "Huawei Pura 70." While you wouldn't ever want to deal with the cobbled-together SoC or whatever is going on with Huawei's software, the "Ultra" model does have a cool party trick up its sleeve: a pop-out main camera lens.

In the years before the smartphone took over all entry-level photography, there used to be a thing called a "point-and-shoot camera." This was a purpose-built device that only took photos, couldn't go on the Internet, and wouldn't let you watch the latest TikTok videos. The trademark feature of these devices was a retractable camera lens, where the front lens (there was only one!) would grow out of the front of the camera when you turned it on. This would give your camera better, longer lens geometry to work with when the camera was on, and would collapse down for easier storage when it was off.

Huawei's latest phone is replicating that. The giant rear camera lens actually grows out of the phone somewhat, thanks to some complicated gearing inside the phone. It's only the tiniest few millimeters, but it's a start. Smartphone manufacturers often resist adding bigger lenses to their devices because they want to still have pocketable devices. A pop-up lens would give the camera engineers more room to work with while still maintaining pocketability.

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Everyone with a Roku TV or streaming device will eventually be forced to enable two-factor authentication after the company disclosed two separate incidents in which roughly 600,000 customers had their accounts accessed through credential stuffing.

Credential stuffing is an attack in which usernames and passwords exposed in one leak are tried out against other accounts, typically using automated scripts. When people reuse usernames and passwords across services or make small, easily intuited changes between them, actors can gain access to accounts with even more identifying information and access.

In the case of the Roku attacks, that meant access to stored payment methods, which could then be used to buy streaming subscriptions and Roku hardware. Roku wrote on its blog, and in a mandated data breach report, that purchases occurred in "less than 400 cases" and that full credit card numbers and other "sensitive information" was not revealed.

Enlarge / Morfydd Clark is Galadriel in The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. (credit: Amazon Studios)

Subscribers lodged thousands of complaints related to inaccuracies in Amazon's Prime Video catalog, including incorrect content and missing episodes, according to a Business Insider report this week. While Prime Video users aren't the only streaming users dealing with these problems, Insider's examination of leaked "internal documents" brings more perspective into the impact of mislabeling and similar errors on streaming platforms.

Insider didn't publish the documents but said they show that "60 percent of all content-related customer-experience complaints for Prime Video last year were about catalogue errors," such as movies or shows labeled with wrong or missing titles.

Specific examples reportedly named in the document include Season 1, Episode 2 of The Rings of Power being available before Season 1, Episode 1; character names being mistranslated; Continuum displaying the wrong age rating; and the Spanish-audio version of Die Hard With a Vengeance missing a chunk of audio.

Enlarge / Google HQ. (credit: Getty Images)

Google is doing a major re-org of Android, Chrome, and the Google hardware division: They're merging! Google Hardware SVP Rick Osterloh will lead the new "Platforms and Devices” division. Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google's previous head of software platforms like Android and ChromeOS, will be headed to "some new projects" at Google.

"Having a unified team across Platforms & Devices will help us deliver higher quality products and experiences for our users and partners," writes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. "It will help us turbocharge the Android and Chrome ecosystems, and bring the best innovations to partners faster — as we did with Circle to Search with Samsung. And internally, it will also speed up decision-making."

Google also justifies the decision the same way it does most decisions nowadays: by saying it's AI-related. The announcement is a few paragraphs in a wide-ranging post by Pichai, titled, "Building for our AI future," and the new division is taking a chunk of Google Research along with it, specifically the group that has been working on computational photography. Pichai wants the team to live in "the intersection of hardware, software, and AI."

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On Wednesday, Colorado expanded the scope of its privacy law initially designed to protect biometric data like fingerprints or face images to become first in the nation to also shield sensitive neural data.

That could stop companies from hoarding brain activity data without residents realizing the risks. The New York Times reported that neural data is increasingly being collected and sold nationwide. And after a market analysis showed that investments in neurotechnology leapt by 60 percent globally from 2019 to 2020—and were valued at $30 billion in 2021—Big Tech companies have significantly intensified plans to develop their own products to rake in potentially billions.

For instance, in 2023, Meta demoed a wristband with a neural interface used to control its smart glasses and unveiled an AI system that could be used to decode the mind. In January, Elon Musk announced that Neuralink implanted its first brain chip in a human that can be used to control a device with their thoughts. And just last month, Apple Insider reported that "Apple is working on technology that could turn the Apple Vision Pro into a brainwave reader to improve mental health, assist with training and workouts, and help with mindfulness."

Enlarge (credit: Sean Gallup | Getty Images)

Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised more layoffs at Google this year, and the company is delivering. Business Insider was the first to report the latest cuts are to "several teams" in Google's real estate and finance departments. The report adds: "One current employee said the changes were 'pretty large-scale' and that some roles are being moved abroad."

CNBC has a copy of the memo that Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat sent out to employees about the layoffs. Porat blames AI for the layoffs, saying, “The tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform shift with Al. As a company, this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers, but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions, including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas.” It's not clear how or if AI is actually taking over roles in real estate and finance.

Google has been making cuts across a ton of departments since 2022, when Pichai declared Google was not productive enough. There was a big set of 12,000 layoffs in January 2023, and an almost uncountable number of smaller cuts since then. Google's cuts are aligned with a massive wave of layoffs across the tech industry.

Enlarge / Here it is: two virtual Mac displays in Vision Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Apple's Vision Pro headset holds the promise to be a powerful extension of your Mac workflow, but the Mac integration it shipped with is just neat, not a big step forward. Now, an app by established independent developers Jordi Bruin, Mathijs Kadijk, and Tom Lokhorst aims to fix that.

Called Splitscreen, it enables you to use two virtual displays at once while working with your Mac and wearing Vision Pro. By contrast, Apple's default implementation only supports mirroring a single Mac display to a resizable virtual one.

Further, the developers are working on achieving what I said I'd like to see from Apple when I wrote up my first impressions of the headset: the ability to move individual Mac windows around your space freely like visionOS apps when your Mac and Vision Pro are connected to one another.

Enlarge / The new, all-electric Atlas. (credit: Boston Dynamics)

The humanoid robotics market is starting to heat up, and the company that's been doing this the longest isn't going to sit by and watch. Boston Dynamics has a new humanoid robot that the company says represents a path to commercialization. It's the company's next-generation, all-electric "Atlas" robot.

While new Atlas and old Atlas share a name, they couldn't be more different when it comes to construction. The old Atlas—a research platform and viral sensation that could handle nearly any terrain, do backflips, and pick up heavy objects—was powered by a heavy, complicated hydraulics system. The new Atlas is all-electric and looks like it's a fraction of the size and weight of the hydraulic version. It also looks like a product, with covers around all the major components and consumer-friendly design touches like a giant status light in the head and a light-up power button that looks like it was ripped right from the Spot assembly line.

Hydraulic Atlas is being retired to make way for the all-electric version. The company posted one last goodbye video for the hydraulic model on its YouTube page, showing the history of the project. Atlas has done a lot of neat tricks over the years, but getting there has required a lot of learning—part of that is taking some absolutely gnarly slams, which are highlighted in the video. The video seemed to go out of its way to show just how cumbersome hydraulics can be. At one point, it looks like Atlas' foot completely breaks off, and hydraulic fluid gushes all over the floor. Other times, the robot just springs a leak, and a fine mist of high-pressure fluid sprays everywhere as the robot goes limp. The fluid has a red tinge to it, so with a little imagination, it can look pretty gory!

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It's easy to get the impression that Discord chat messages are ephemeral, especially across different public servers, where lines fly upward at a near-unreadable pace. But someone claims to be catching and compiling that data and is offering packages that can track more than 600 million users across more than 14,000 servers.

Joseph Cox at 404 Media confirmed that Spy Pet, a service that sells access to a database of purportedly 3 billion Discord messages, offers data "credits" to customers who pay in bitcoin, ethereum, or other cryptocurrency. Searching individual users will reveal the servers that Spy Pet can track them across, a raw and exportable table of their messages, and connected accounts, such as GitHub. Ominously, Spy Pet lists more than 86,000 other servers in which it has "no bots," but "we know it exists."

• 

  An example of Spy Pet's service from its website. Shown are a user's nicknames, connected accounts, banner image, server memberships, and messages across those servers tracked by Spy Pet. [credit: Spy Pet ]

As Cox notes, Discord doesn't make messages inside server channels, like blog posts or unlocked social media feeds, easy to publicly access and search. But many Discord users many not expect their messages, server memberships, bans, or other data to be grabbed by a bot, compiled, and sold to anybody wishing to pin them all on a particular user. 404 Media confirmed the service's function with multiple user examples. Private messages are not mentioned by Spy Pet and are presumably still secure.

Enlarge / Cans of Tab diet soda on display in 2011. Tab was discontinued in 2020. There has never been a soda named "Spaces" that had a cult following. (credit: Getty Images)

Anybody can contribute to the Linux kernel, but any person's commit suggestion can become the focus of the kernel's master and namesake, Linus Torvalds. Torvalds is famously not overly committed to niceness, though he has been working on it since 2018. You can see glimpses of this newer, less curse-laden approach in how Torvalds recently addressed a commit with which he vehemently disagreed. It involves tabs.

The commit last week changed exactly one thing on one line, replacing a tab character with a space: "It helps Kconfig parsers to read file without error." Torvalds responded with a commit of his own, as spotted by The Register, which would "add some hidden tabs on purpose." Trying to smooth over a tabs-versus-spaces matter seemed to awaken Torvalds to the need to have tab-detecting failures be "more obvious." Torvalds would have added more, he wrote, but didn't "want to make things uglier than necessary. But it *might* be necessary if it turns out we see more of this kind of silly tooling."

If you've read this far and don't understand what's happening, please allow me, a failed CS minor, to offer a quick explanation: Tabs Versus Spaces will never be truly resolved, codified, or set right by standards, and the energy spent on the issue over time could, if harnessed, likely power one or more small nations. Still, the Linux kernel has its own coding style, and it directly cites "K&R," or Kernighan & Ritchie, the authors of the coding bible The C Programming Language, which is a tabs book. If you are submitting kernel code, it had better use tabs (eight-character tabs, ideally, though that is tied in part to teletype and line-printer history).

Enlarge / The Framework Laptop 13. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Since Framework showed off its first prototypes in February 2021, we've generally been fans of the company's modular, repairable, upgradeable laptops.

Not that the company's hardware releases to date have been perfect—each Framework Laptop 13 model has had quirks and flaws that range from minor to quite significant, and the Laptop 16's upsides struggle to balance its downsides. But the hardware mostly does a good job of functioning as a regular laptop while being much more tinkerer-friendly than your typical MacBook, XPS, or ThinkPad.

But even as it builds new upgrades for its systems, expands sales of refurbished and B-stock hardware as budget options, and promotes the re-use of its products via external enclosures, Framework has struggled with the other side of computing longevity and sustainability: providing up-to-date software.

Enlarge / Generic, non-Western Digital SD cards. (credit: Getty)

Western Digital plans to release the first 4TB SD card next year. On Thursday, the storage firm announced plans to demo the product in person next week.

Western Digital will launch the SD card, which follows the SD Association's Secure Digital Ultra Capacity (SDUC) standard, under its SanDisk brand and market it toward "complex media and entertainment workflows," such as those involving cameras and laptops that use high-resolution video with high framerates, the announcement said.

The spacious card will use the Ultra High Speed-1 (UHS-1) bus interface, supporting max theoretical transfer rates of up to 104 MB per second. It will support minimum write speeds of 10 MB/s, AnandTech reported. Minimum sequential write speeds are expected to reach 30 MB/s, the publication said.

Enlarge / From magnets we came, to magnets we return. (credit: Garner Products)

There is the mental image that most people have of electronics recycling, and then there is the reality, which is shredding.

Less than 20 percent of e-waste even makes it to recycling. That which does is, if not acquired through IT asset disposition (ITAD) or spotted by a worker who sees some value, heads into the shredder for raw metals extraction. If you've ever toured an electronics recycling facility, you can see for yourself how much of your stuff eventually gets chewed into little bits, whether due to design, to unprofitable reuse markets, or sheer volume concerns.

Traditional hard drives have some valuable things inside them—case, cover, circuit boards, drive assemblies, actuators, and rare-earth magnets—but only if they avoid the gnashing teeth. That's where the DiskMantler comes in. Garner Products, a data elimination firm, has a machine that it claims can process 500 hard drives (the HDD kind) per day in a way that leaves a drive separated into those useful components. And the DiskMantler does this by shaking the thing to death (video).

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Another day, another dead Google product. The Google One VPN service we complained about last week is headed to the chopping block. Google's support documents haven't been updated yet, but Android Authority reported on an email going out to Google One users informing them of the shutdown. 9to5Google also got confirmation of the shutdown from Google.

The Google One VPN launched in 2020 as a bonus feature for paying Google One subscribers. Google One is Google's cloud storage subscription plan that allows users to buy extra storage for Gmail, Drive, and Google Photos. In 2020, the plan was exclusive to the expensive 2TB tier for $10 a month, but later, it was brought down to all Google One tiers, including the entry-level $2-per-month option.

By our count, Google has three VPN products, though "products" might be too strong a word since they are all essentially the same thing—VPN market segments? There's the general Google One VPN for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac—this is the one that's dying. There's also the "Pixel VPN by Google One," which came with Pixel phones (the "Google One" branding here makes no sense since you didn't have to subscribe to Google One) and the Google Fi VPN that's exclusive to Google Fi Android and iOS customers.

Enlarge / President Biden speaking at the official opening of TSMC’s first Arizona fabrication plant in December 2022. The Taiwanese chipmaker plans to start manufacturing 2-nanometer chips in the US in 2028. (credit: Caitlin O’Hara/Bloomberg via Getty)

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s decision to bring its latest technology to America is a big step forward for US President Joe Biden’s quest for security in the vital tech supply chain—but still leaves Washington short of being able to completely produce the most complex chips in the US.

The world’s biggest chipmaker by sales must also pull off an intricate balancing act as it steps up its US presence, satisfying customers such as Nvidia without damaging its highly profitable business model, which has underpinned the development of the global semiconductor industry for more than 30 years.

TSMC’s planned $65 billion of investments in Arizona are part of a construction race in the US that involves other global chipmakers such as Samsung and Intel, which are also taking big subsidies from Washington.

Enlarge / The classic Sega Genesis game Sonic the Hedgehog running on an iPhone—in this case, as a standalone app. (credit: Samuel Axon)

When Apple posted its latest update to the App Store's app review and submission policies for developers, it included language that appears to explicitly allow a new kind of app for emulating retro console games.

Apple has long forbidden apps that run code from an external source, but today's announced changes now allow "software that is not embedded in the binary" in certain cases, with "retro game console emulator apps can offer to download games" specifically listed as one of those cases.

Here's the exact wording:

Enlarge / A promotional image for a Roku TV. (credit: Roku)

Roku TV sets come with ads. Generally, these are restricted to Roku's home and menu screens, its screensavers, and its first-party video channels, and once you start playing video, the only ads you'll see are the ones from the service you're streaming from. That said, Roku TVs have shown ads atop live TV before.

Now, the company is apparently experimenting with ways to show ads over top of even more of the things you plug into your TV. A patent application from the company spotted by Lowpass describes a system for displaying ads over any device connected over HDMI, a list that could include cable boxes, game consoles, DVD or Blu-ray players, PCs, or even other video streaming devices. Roku filed for the patent in August 2023 and it was published in November 2023, though it hasn't yet been granted.

The technology described would detect whether content was paused in multiple ways—if the video being displayed is static, if there's no audio being played, if a pause symbol is shown anywhere on screen, or if (on a TV with HDMI-CEC enabled) a pause signal has been received from some passthrough remote control. The system would analyze the paused image and use metadata "to identify one or more objects" in the video frame, transmit that identification information to a network, and receive and display a "relevant ad" over top of whatever the paused content is.

Enlarge / Pebblebee's Android trackers. (credit: Pebblebee)

Will Google ever launch its "Find My" network? The Android ecosystem was supposed to have its own version of Apple's AirTags by now. Google has had a crowd-sourced device-tracking network sitting dormant on 3 billion Android phones since December 2022. Partners have been ready to go with Bluetooth tag hardware since May 2023! This was all supposed to launch a year ago, but Google has been in a holding pattern. The good news is we're finally seeing some progress after a year of silence.

The reason for Google's lengthy delay is actually Apple. A week before Google's partners announced their Android network Bluetooth tags, Google and Apple jointly announced a standard to detect "unknown" Bluetooth trackers and show users alerts if their phone thinks they're being stalked. Since you can constantly see an AirTag's location, they can be used for stalking by just covertly slipping one into a bag or car; nobody wants that, so everyone's favorite mobile duopoly is teaming up.

Google did its half of this partnership and rolled out AirTag detection in July 2023. At the same time, Google also announced: "We’ve made the decision to hold the rollout of the Find My Device network until Apple has implemented protections for iOS." Surely Apple would be burning the midnight oil to launch iOS Android tag detection as soon as possible so that Google could start competing with AirTags.

Enlarge / A person made of many parts, similar to the attorney who handles both severe criminal law and copyright takedowns for an Arizona law firm. (credit: Getty Images)

If you run a personal or hobby website, getting a copyright notice from a law firm about an image on your site can trigger some fast-acting panic. As someone who has paid to settle a news service-licensing issue before, I can empathize with anybody who wants to make this kind of thing go away.

Which is why a new kind of angle-on-an-angle scheme can seem both obvious to spot and likely effective. Ernie Smith, the prolific, ever-curious writer behind the newsletter Tedium, received a "DMCA Copyright Infringement Notice" in late March from "Commonwealth Legal," representing the "Intellectual Property division" of Tech4Gods.

The issue was with a photo of a keyfob from legitimate photo service Unsplash used in service of a post about a strange Uber ride Smith once took. As Smith detailed in a Mastodon thread, the purported firm needed him to "add a credit to our client immediately" through a link to Tech4Gods, and said it should be "addressed in the next five business days." Removing the image "does not conclude the matter," and should Smith not have taken action, the putative firm would have to "activate" its case, relying on DMCA 512(c) (which, in many readings, actually does grant relief should a website owner, unaware of infringing material, "act expeditiously to remove" said material). The email unhelpfully points to the main page of the Internet Archive so that Smith might review "past usage records."

Enlarge / A Waymo Jaguar I-Pace. (credit: Waymo)

Your next food delivery driver may be a robot.

Waymo and Uber have been working together on regular Ubers for a while, but the two companies are now teaming up for food delivery. Automated Uber Eats is rolling out to Waymo's Phoenix service area. Waymo says this will start in "select merchants in Chandler, Tempe and Mesa, including local favorites like Princess Pita, Filiberto's, and Bosa Donuts."

Phoenix Uber Eats customers can fire up the app and order some food, and they might see the message “autonomous vehicles may deliver your order.” Waymo says you'll be able to opt out of robot delivery at checkout if you want.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

Old-school user-controlled memory management is back, baby!

Or at least it's a feature Microsoft is testing in the newest builds of its Chromium-based Edge browser (via The Verge). User Leopeva64 on X, formerly Twitter, posted screenshots of an Edge build with a "resource controls" slider for manually limiting the browser's RAM usage. There's also a toggle to set whether you want RAM limits to kick in when you're playing a game, or if you want the limit to be enforced at all times.

It builds on a feature that's already in the stable version of Edge, where the browser will alert you if an individual tab has particularly high memory usage. The minimum limit you can set for Edge appears to be 1GB, and it goes all the way up to the amount of physical memory you have installed in your PC.

Enlarge (credit: Microsoft)

For most people, Windows 10 will stop receiving critical security updates on October 14, 2025, roughly a decade after its initial release. For people using computers that can't upgrade to Windows 11 or organizations with dozens or hundreds of PCs to manage, Microsoft is making another three years of Extended Security Updates (ESUs) available, but only if you can pay for them. And the company is ready to start talking about pricing.

In a blog post published earlier this week, Microsoft's Jason Leznek writes that the first year of ESUs will cost $61 per PC for businesses that want to keep their systems updated.

And as with the Windows 7 ESUs a few years ago, Microsoft says that the price will double each year—so the second year of ESUs will cost $122 per PC, and the third year will cost a whopping $244 per device. And Microsoft says this pricing is cumulative; if you decided to buy ESUs for year three after skipping the first two years, you'd also need to pay for the first two years retroactively. These slow price hikes seem intended to drive businesses to migrate to Windows 11 as quickly as they can while still giving them a way to keep using Windows 10 when absolutely necessary.

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Spotify Premium subscriptions include up to 15 hours of audiobook listening. But starting in April, the company will charge an extra $1 to $2 per month for the feature, Bloomberg reported today, citing anonymous “people familiar with the matter.” The reported price hike would be the second that Spotify customers have faced in nine months.

Currently, Spotify charges nothing for its free plan with ads, $5.99/month for students, $10.99/month for its Premium plan, $14.99/month for its Duo Premium plan for two users, and $16.99/month for its Family Premium plan with up to six users.

Bloomberg reported that individual plan prices will go up by approximately $1 per month, and multi-member plans will increase by $2 per month.

Enlarge / A Dell XPS 14 laptop. The Copilot key is to the right of the right-Alt button. (credit: Dell)

In January, Microsoft introduced a new key to Windows PC keyboards for the first time in 30 years. The Copilot key, dedicated to launching Microsoft's eponymous generative AI assistant, is already on some Windows laptops released this year. On Monday, Tom’s Hardware dug into the new addition and determined exactly what pressing the button does, which is actually pretty simple. Pushing a computer's integrated Copilot button is like pressing left-Shift + Windows key + F23 simultaneously.

Tom's Hardware confirmed this after wondering if the Copilot key introduced a new scan code to Windows or if it worked differently. Using the scripting program AuthoHotkey with a new laptop with a Copilot button, Tom's Hardware discovered the keystrokes registered when a user presses the Copilot key. The publication confirmed with Dell that “this key assignment is standard for the Copilot key and done at Microsoft's direction.”

F23

Surprising to see in that string of keys is F23. Having a computer keyboard with a function row or rows that take you from F1 all the way to F23 is quite rare today. When I try to imagine a keyboard that comes with an F23 button, vintage keyboards come to mind, more specifically buckling spring keyboards from IBM.

Amazon is giving up on the cashier-less "Just Walk Out" technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The Information reports that new stores will be built without computer-vision-powered surveillance technology, and "the majority" of existing stores will have the tech removed. In the early days, Amazon's ambitions included selling Just Walk Out to other brick-and-mortar stores. The problem was that the technology never really worked.

As it says on the tin, Just Walk Out was supposed to let customers grab what they wanted from a store and just leave, skipping any kind of checkout process. Amazon wanted to track what customers took with them purely via AI-powered video surveillance; the system just took a phone scan at the door, and shoppers would be billed later via their Amazon accounts.

When the technology was announced in 2016, Amazon's sales pitch asked, "What if we could weave the most advanced machine learning, computer vision, and AI into the very fabric of a store so you never had to wait in line?" The store was filled with 100-plus cameras and rigid item locations, all designed to try to make AI-powered computer vision checkout possible.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich / Thinkstock)

Google offers a VPN via its "Google One" monthly subscription plan, and while it debuted on phones, a desktop app has been available for Windows and Mac OS for over a year now. Since a lot of people pay for Google One for the cloud storage increase for their Google accounts, you might be tempted to try the VPN on a desktop, but Windows users testing out the app haven't seemed too happy lately. An open bug report on Google's GitHub for the project says the Windows app "breaks" the Windows DNS, and this has been ongoing since at least November.

A VPN would naturally route all your traffic through a secure tunnel, but you've still got to do DNS lookups somewhere. A lot of VPN services also come with a DNS service, and Google is no different. The problem is that Google's VPN app changes the Windows DNS settings of all network adapters to always use Google's DNS, whether the VPN is on or off. Even if you change them, Google's program will change them back.

Most VPN apps don't work this way, and even Google's Mac VPN program doesn't work this way. The users in the thread (and the ones emailing us) expect the app, at minimum, to use the original Windows settings when the VPN is off. Since running a VPN is often about privacy and security, users want to be able to change the DNS away from Google even when the VPN is running.

Before the cancellation of The Problem with Jon Stewart on Apple TV+, Apple forbade the inclusion of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan as a guest and steered the show away from confronting issues related to artificial intelligence, according to Jon Stewart.

This isn't the first we've heard of this rift between Apple and Stewart. When the Apple TV+ show was canceled last October, reports circulated that he told his staff that creative differences over guests and topics were a factor in the decision.

The New York Times reported that both China and AI were sticking points between Apple and Stewart. Stewart confirmed the broad strokes of that narrative in a CBS Morning Show interview after it was announced that he would return to The Daily Show.

Enlarge (credit: Discord)

Discord had long been strongly opposed to ads, but starting this week, it's giving video game makers the ability to advertise to its users. The introduction of so-called Sponsored Quests marks a notable change from the startup's previous business model, but, at least for now, it seems much less intrusive than the ads shoved into other social media platforms, especially since Discord users can choose not to engage with them.

Discord first announced Sponsored Quests on March 7, with Peter Sellis, Discord's SVP of product, writing in a blog post that users would start seeing them in the "coming weeks." Sponsored Quests offer PC gamers in-game rewards for getting friends to watch a stream of them playing through Discord. Discord senior product communications manager Swaleha Carlson confirmed to Ars Technica that Sponsored Quests launch this week.

Discord shared this image in March as an example of the new type of ads. (credit: Discord)

The goal is for video games to get exposure to more gamers, serving as a form of marketing. On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that it viewed a slide from a slideshow Discord shows to game developers regarding the ads that reads: "We’ll get you in front of players. And those players will get you into their friend groups."

Enlarge / An Amazon Web Services (AWS) data center under construction in Stone Ridge, Virginia, in March 2024. Amazon will spend more than $150 billion on data centers in the next 15 years. (credit: Getty Images)

Redis, a tremendously popular tool for storing data in-memory rather than in a database, recently switched its licensing from an open source BSD license to both a Source Available License and a Server Side Public License (SSPL).

The software project and company supporting it were fairly clear in why they did this. Redis CEO Rowan Trollope wrote on March 20 that while Redis and volunteers sponsored the bulk of the project's code development, "the majority of Redis’ commercial sales are channeled through the largest cloud service providers, who commoditize Redis’ investments and its open source community." Clarifying a bit, "cloud service providers hosting Redis offerings will no longer be permitted to use the source code of Redis free of charge."

Clarifying even further: Amazon Web Services (and lesser cloud giants), you cannot continue reselling Redis as a service as part of your $90 billion business without some kind of licensed contribution back.

Enlarge / A spooky Halloween display from Google's Seattle campus. (credit: Dana Fried)

RIP Google Podcasts. Google's self-branded podcasting service shuts down tomorrow, April 2, and existing users have until July to export any subscriptions that are still on the service. Google originally announced the shutdown in September and has been plastering shutdown notices all over the Google Podcasts site and app for a few days now.

Google Podcasts was Google's third podcasting service, after Google Listen (2009–2012) and Google Play Music Podcasts (2016–2020). The shutdown will clear the deck for Google's media consolidation under the YouTube brand with podcasting app No. 4: YouTube Podcasts.

Google Podcasts has always had an awkward life.  Despite an eight-year existence, it has only been a viable podcasting app for maybe half that time. The project grew out of the Google Search team's desire to index podcast content. That started in 2016 when searching for a podcast would show a player embedded right in the Google Search results. This only worked on google.com and on the Android search app.

Enlarge / Two cheapo Intel mini PCs, a Raspberry Pi 5, and an Xbox controller for scale. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

I recently tried to use a Raspberry Pi 5 as a regular desktop PC. The experiment wasn't a failure—I was able to use a Pi to get most of my work done for a few days. But the device's performance, and especially the relative immaturity of the Linux's Arm software ecosystem, meant that there were lots of incompatibilities and rough edges.

One of the problems with trying to use a Pi 5 as a regular desktop computer is that, by the time you've paid for the 8GB version of the board, a decent active cooler and case, and (ideally) some kind of M.2 storage attachment and SSD, you've spent close to a couple of hundred dollars on the system. That's not a ton of money to spend on a desktop PC, but it is enough that the Pi no longer feels miraculously cheap, and there are actually other, more flexible competitors worth considering.

Consider the selection of sub-$200 mini desktop PCs that litter the online storefronts of Amazon and AliExpress. Though you do need to roll the dice on low-to-no-name brands like Beelink, GMKTec, Firebat, BMax, Trigkey, or Bosgame, it's actually possible to buy a reasonably capable desktop system with 8GB to 16GB of RAM, 256GB or 512GB of storage, a Windows 11 license, and a workaday x86-based Intel CPU for as little as $107, though Amazon pricing usually runs closer to $170.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Charles O'Rear)

Two lawsuits filed by a civil rights group allege that county jails in Michigan banned in-person visits in order to maximize revenue from voice and video calls as part of a "quid pro quo kickback scheme" with prison phone companies.

Civil Rights Corps filed the lawsuits on March 15 against the county governments, two county sheriffs, and two prison phone companies. The suits filed in county courts seek class-action status on behalf of people unable to visit family members detained in the local jails, including children who have been unable to visit their parents.

Defendants in one lawsuit include St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King, prison phone company Securus Technologies, and Securus owner Platinum Equity. In the other lawsuit, defendants include Genesee County Sheriff Christopher Swanson and prison phone company ViaPath Technologies. ViaPath was formerly called Global Tel*Link Corporation (GTL), and the lawsuit primarily refers to the company as GTL.

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  Fits in nicely with old cassettes and floppy disks. [credit: 8BitDo ]

The Commodore 64 introduced a generation of future computer geeks to personal computing. The 8-bit system first launched in 1982 and was discontinued in 1994. During that time, it made its mark as one of the first and most influential personal computers, and many still remember the computer fondly.

A Commodore 64. (credit: Bill Bertram/Wikimedia Commons)

Gaming peripherals maker 8BitDo wants to bring that nostalgia to people's fingertips and this week announced the Retro Mechanical Keyboard - C64 Edition. 8BitDo is careful not to use the name "Commodore" outright. But with marketing images featuring retro Commodore gear in the background, press materials saying that the keyboard was "inspired by the classics," and certain design cues, the keyboard is clearly a tribute to the '80s keyboard-computer.

8BitDo starts with the sort of beige that you only see on new peripherals these days if the gadgets are trying to appear old. A rainbow stripe runs horizontally and north of the function row, like on Commodore's computer. There's a power button with a bulb popping out of the keyboard case, ready to illuminate when it receives the signal.

Enlarge / The M2 iPad Pro. The updated version will come with refined designs and new accessories. (credit: Apple)

If you've been waiting for new iPads to come out, prepare to wait just a little longer: Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says that redesigned iPad Pros with Apple's M3 chip, plus refreshed iPad Air models with the M2 and a larger-screened option, should now arrive sometime in "early May." Gurman had previously reported that new iPads could arrive in March or April, not long after the updated M3 MacBook Airs.

Gurman suggests that "complex new manufacturing techniques" for the new iPad screens have "contributed to the delay," and that Apple is also "working to finish software for the devices."

The details of what the new iPads will look like hasn't changed. The new iPad Pro models will shift to using OLED display panels for the first time and will have their designs tweaked for the first time since the 2018 iPad Pros introduced the current rounded, slim-bezeled look. Those new iPad Pros will also come with redesigned Magic Keyboard and Apple Pencil accessories, though it's unclear whether those accessories will be totally rethought or if they'll just tweak existing designs to work with the new tablets.

Enlarge / The Google Gemini logo. (credit: Google)

In early March, Google made the odd announcement that only one of its two latest smartphones, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, would be able to run its latest AI model, called "Google Gemini." Despite having very similar specs, the smaller Pixel 8 wouldn't get the new AI model, with the company citing mysterious "hardware limitations" as the reason. It was a strange statement considering the fact that Google designed and marketed the Pixel 8 to be AI-centric and then designed a smartphone-centric AI model called "Gemini Nano" yet still couldn't make the two work together.

A few weeks later, Google is backtracking somewhat. The company announced on the Pixel Phone Help forum that the smaller Pixel 8 actually will get Gemini Nano in the next big quarterly Android release, which should happen in June. There's a catch, though—while the Pixel 8 Pro will get Gemini Nano as a user-facing feature, on the Pixel 8, it's only being released "as a developer option." That means you'll be able to turn it on only via the hidden Developer Options menu in the settings, and most people will miss out on it.

Google's Seang Chau, VP of devices and services software, explained the decision on the company's in-house "Made by Google" podcast. "The Pixel 8 Pro, having 12GB of RAM, was a perfect place for us to put [Gemini Nano] on the device and see what we could do," Chau said. "When we looked at the Pixel 8 as an example, the Pixel 8 has 4GB less memory, and it wasn't as easy of a call to just say, 'all right, we're going to enable it on Pixel 8 as well.'" According to Chau, Google's trepidation is because the company doesn't want to "degrade the experience" on the smaller Pixel 8, which only has 8GB of RAM.

Enlarge / These kinds of sharing names are fun to shout across the house (I have first-hand knowledge of this). (credit: Kevin Purdy)

I like AirDrop just fine for sending files between devices, but I'm the only one of two humans in my household that regularly uses Apple devices. I cannot, to paraphrase the Apple CEO's litigation-influencing quip, simply buy my spouse an iPhone. And a MacBook. And sell our household Chromebook. And give up entirely on Windows-based PC gaming.

Instead, I've come to use two apps to send files between operating systems on the same Wi-Fi, whether they're systems from Cupertino, Redmond, Mountain View, or elsewhere. One is LocalSend, a cross-platform app with an open source client and protocol that I install wherever I can. The other lower-friction tool that's especially handy for guests and rarely used devices is SnapDrop, a website or web app you open on both devices and then send files through, entirely on your local network. It, too, has its code out there for anybody to view.

Neither of these apps is new, which is good. They've been around long enough to garner good reviews and trust from their users. Beyond sharing files between two humans, I've also leaned on them when setting up headless systems or other quirky devices.

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  All the available Immersive Video launch content fit on a small strip in the TV app. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Tonight, Apple will debut some new Immersive Video content for the Vision Pro headset—the first sports content for the device. It doesn't seem like much after two months of no new content, though.

Starting at 6 pm PT/9 pm ET, Vision Pro users will be able to watch a sports film captured for the platform's Immersive Video format. The video will be a series of highlights from last year's Major League Soccer (MLS) playoffs, and according to Six Colors, it will run just five minutes. It will be free for all Vision Pro users.

On February 2, Apple released what appeared to be the first episodes of three Immersive Video series: Adventure, Prehistoric Planet, and Wildlife. Each debuted alongside the Vision Pro's launch with one episode labeled "Episode 1" of "Season 1."

Enlarge / A promotional image for Sorry for Your Loss, which was a Facebook Watch original scripted series. (credit: Facebook)

Last April, Meta revealed that it would no longer support original shows, like Jada Pinkett Smith's Red Table Talk talk show, on Facebook Watch. Meta's streaming business that was once viewed as competition for the likes of YouTube and Netflix is effectively dead now; Facebook doesn't produce original series, and Facebook Watch is no longer available as a video-streaming app.

The streaming business' demise has seemed related to cost cuts at Meta that have also included layoffs. However, recently unsealed court documents in an antitrust suit against Meta [PDF] claim that Meta has squashed its streaming dreams in order to appease one of its biggest ad customers: Netflix.

Facebook allegedly gave Netflix creepy privileges

As spotted via Gizmodo, a letter was filed on April 14 in relation to a class-action antitrust suit that was filed by Meta customers, accusing Meta of anti-competitive practices that harm social media competition and consumers. The letter, made public Saturday, asks a court to have Reed Hastings, Netflix's founder and former CEO, respond to a subpoena for documents that plaintiffs claim are relevant to the case. The original complaint filed in December 2020 [PDF] doesn’t mention Netflix beyond stating that Facebook “secretly signed Whitelist and Data sharing agreements” with Netflix, along with “dozens” of other third-party app developers. The case is still ongoing.

Enlarge / One thing you can say about this crypto wallet: You can't confuse it for any other. (credit: Getty Images)

The Snap Store, where containerized Snap apps are distributed for Ubuntu's Linux distribution, has been attacked for months by fake crypto wallet uploads that seek to steal users' currencies. As a result, engineers at Ubuntu's parent firm are now manually reviewing apps uploaded to the store before they are available.

The move follows weeks of reporting by Alan Pope, a former Canonical/Ubuntu staffer on the Snapcraft team, who is still very active in the ecosystem. In February, Pope blogged about how one bitcoin investor lost nine bitcoins (about $490,000 at the time) by using an "Exodus Wallet" app from the Snap store. Exodus is a known cryptocurrency wallet, but this wallet was not from that entity. As detailed by one user wondering what happened on the Snapcraft forums, the wallet immediately transferred his entire balance to an unknown address after a 12-word recovery phrase was entered (which Exodus tells you on support pages never to do).

Pope takes pains to note that cryptocurrency is inherently fraught with loss risk. Still, Ubuntu's App Center, which presents the Snap Store for desktop users, tagged the "Exodus" app as "Safe," and the web version of the Snap Store describes Snaps as "safe to run." While Ubuntu is describing apps as "Safe" in the sense of being an auto-updating container with runtime confinement (or "sandboxed"), a green checkmark with "Safe" next to it could be misread, especially by a newcomer to Ubuntu, Snaps, and Linux generally.

Enlarge (credit: Proxmox)

Broadcom has made sweeping changes to VMware's business since acquiring the company in November 2023, killing off the perpetually licensed versions of VMware's software and instituting large-scale layoffs. Broadcom executives have acknowledged the "unease" that all of these changes have created among VMware's customers and partners but so far haven't been interested in backtracking.

Among the casualties of the acquisition is the free version of VMware's vSphere Hypervisor, also known as ESXi. ESXi is "bare-metal hypervisor" software, meaning that it allows users to run multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware while still allowing those operating systems direct access to disks, GPUs, and other system resources.

One alternative to ESXi for home users and small organizations is Proxmox Virtual Environment, a Debian-based Linux operating system that provides broadly similar functionality and has the benefit of still being an actively developed product. To help jilted ESXi users, the Proxmox team has just added a new "integrated import wizard" to Proxmox that supports importing of ESXi VMs, easing the pain of migrating between platforms.

Enlarge / Being in a box doesn't mean the iPhone can't update. (credit: Apple)

Unboxing a new gadget is always a fun experience, but it's usually marred somewhat by the setup process. Either your device has been in a box for months, or it's just now launching and ships in the box with pre-release software. Either way, the first thing you have to do is connect to Wi-Fi and wait several minutes for an OS update to download and install. The issue is so common that going through a lengthy download is an expected part of buying anything that connects to the Internet.

But what if you could update the device while it's still in the box? That's the latest plan cooked up by Apple, which is close to rolling out a system that will let Apple Stores wirelessly update new iPhones while they're still in their boxes. The new system is called "Presto."

French site iGeneration has the first picture of what this setup looks like. It starts with a clearly Apple-designed silver rack that holds iPhones and has a few lights on the front. The site (through translation) calls the device a "toaster," and yes, it looks like a toaster oven or food heating rack.

Enlarge / Oregon's repair bill prohibits companies from implementing software locks that prohibit aftermarket or used parts from being installed in their devices.

Oregon Governor Tina Kotek today signed the state's Right to Repair Act, which will push manufacturers to provide more repair options for their products than any other state so far.

The law, like those passed in New York, California, and Minnesota, will require many manufacturers to provide the same parts, tools, and documentation to individuals and repair shops that they provide to their own repair teams.

But Oregon's bill goes further, preventing companies from implementing schemes that require parts to be verified through encrypted software checks before they will function. Known as parts pairing or serialization, Oregon's bill, SB 1596, is the first in the nation to target that practice. Oregon State Senator Janeen Sollman (D) and Representative Courtney Neron (D) sponsored and pushed the bill in the state senate and legislature.

Enlarge / The basic requirements for an AI PC, at least when it's running Windows. (credit: Intel)

Microsoft said in January that 2024 would be the year of the "AI PC," and we know that AI PCs will include a few hardware components that most Windows systems currently do not include—namely, a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) and Microsoft's new Copilot key for keyboards. But so far we haven't heard a whole lot about what a so-called AI PC will actually do for users.

Microsoft and Intel are starting to talk about a few details as part of an announcement from Intel about a new AI PC developer program that will encourage software developers to leverage local hardware to build AI features into their apps.

The main news comes from Tom's Hardware, confirming that AI PCs would be able to run "more elements of Copilot," Microsoft's AI chatbot assistant, "locally on the client." Currently, Copilot relies on server-side processing even for small requests, introducing lag that is tolerable if you're making a broad request for information but less so if all you want to do is change a setting or get basic answers. Running generative AI models locally could also improve user privacy, making it possible to take advantage of AI-infused software without automatically sending information to a company that will use it for further model training.

Enlarge / OnLeak's renders of the Pixel 9 Pro XL, the Pixel 9 Pro, and the Pixel 9. (credit: OnLeaks / 91Mobiles / MySmartPrice)

When renders of the Pixel 9 came out in January from OnLeaks, we got our first hints that a big change in Google's lineup was afoot. Usually, the company does a big "Pro" phone with three cameras and all the premium features and then a smaller Pixel that gets cut down somewhat, usually with only two cameras. Those January renders showed a big and small phone both with three cameras, indicating the base model Pixel 9 was getting updated to be a "mini-Pro" model—a smaller phone, but still with all the trimmings. The small Pro model still seems to be in the works, but apparently, that's not the base model.

The new render from OnLeaks and 91Mobiles shows a third Pixel 9. This one is the usual cut-down small model with only two cameras. Apparently, the lineup would now be a 6.8-inch "Pixel 9 Pro XL," a "Pixel 9 Pro" at 6.1 inches, and a "Pixel 9" at 6.0 inches.

The base model's design looks just like the other Pixel 9 leaks. The camera bar takes on a new rounded pill shape. The sides switch to a flat metal band, like an iPhone 4/15. The corners of the display and phone body are much more rounded.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Your keyboard is the thread that connects you to your computer. The way a keyboard feels—from the sensations of each key pressing down and resetting to the build of the board’s chassis—has a direct impact on your typing experience, affecting accuracy, speed, and fatigue.

We’ve dug into the joys of quality keyboards and the thrills of customization at Ars Technica before. But what really makes one type of keyboard feel better than another? People say membrane keyboards feel mushy, but why? And what about keyboards with cult-like followings? What makes decades-old IBM keyboards or expensive Topres so special?

In this guide, we’ll look at how some of the most popular keyboard categories work and how their differences impact typing feel.

Enlarge / The logo for WWDC24. (credit: Apple)

Apple has announced dates for this year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). WWDC24 will run from June 10 through June 14 at the company's Cupertino, California, headquarters, but everything will be streamed online.

Apple posted about the event with the following generic copy:

Join us online for the biggest developer event of the year. Be there for the unveiling of the latest Apple platforms, technologies, and tools. Learn how to create and elevate your apps and games. Engage with Apple designers and engineers and connect with the worldwide developer community. All online and at no cost.

As always, the conference will kick off with a keynote presentation on the first day, which is Monday, June 10. You can be sure Apple will use that event to at least announce the key features of its next round of annual software updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, visionOS, and tvOS.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

We are quickly barreling toward an age of viable Arm-powered Windows laptops with the upcoming launch of Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite CPU. Hardware options are great, but getting useful computers out of them will require a lot of new software, and a big one has just launched: Chrome for Windows on Arm.

Google has had a nightly "canary" build running since January, but now it has a blog post up touting a production-ready version of Chrome for "Arm-compatible Windows PCs powered by Snapdragon." That's right, Qualcomm has a big hand in this release, too, with its own press announcement touting Google's browser release for its upcoming chip. Google promises a native version of Chrome will be "fully optimized for your PC’s [Arm] hardware and operating system to make browsing the web faster and smoother."

Apple upended laptop CPU architecture when it dumped Intel and launched the Arm-based Apple Silicon M1. A few years later and Qualcomm is ready to answer—mostly by buying a company full of Apple Silicon veterans—with the upcoming launch of the Snapdragon X Elite chip. Qualcomm claims the X Elite will bring Apple Silicon-class hardware to Windows, but the chip isn't out yet—it's due for a "mid-2024" release. Most of the software you'll be running will still be written in x86 and need to go through a translation layer, which will slow things down, but at least it won't have to be your primary browser.

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  This is one of the Panasonic Avionics Astrova in-flight entertainment systems, set to debut in Icelandair, Qantus, and United Airlines flights in the next couple of years. [credit: Panasonic ]

Flying on commercial airlines today might be a lot more of a pain than it used to be, but new tech is going to bring some improvement to one part of the experience—in-flight entertainment. Panasonic Avionics' brand Astrova in-flight entertainment systems are starting to roll out on commercial flights on certain airlines, promising 4K HDR TVs and other features to the backs of seats that should be a huge upgrade over the abysmal screens we normally watch in-flight movies on.

Look at most commercial airlines today, and you'll find a tiny, terrible LCD TV embedded in the seat in front of you. These HD, standard dynamic range screens have terrible contrast and poor viewing angles, and they aren't bright enough to achieve a good viewing experience when the overhead lights are on.

They're bad enough that I always bring my own hardware for flights—most recently, I took three flights with Apple's Vision Pro headset, which I plan to write about later this week. But most people just bring a tablet.

Enlarge (credit: Mozilla)

Mozilla's Monitor Plus, a service launched by the privacy-minded tech firm in February, notes on its pitch page that there is "a $240 billion industry of data brokers selling your private information for profit" and that its offering can "take back your privacy."

Mozilla's most recent move to protect privacy has been to cut out one of the key providers of Monitor Plus' people-search protections, Onerep. That comes after reporting from security reporter Brian Krebs, who uncovered Onerep CEO and founder Dimitri Shelest as the founder of "dozens of people-search services since 2010," including one, Nuwber, that still sells the very kind of "background reports" that Monitor Plus seeks to curb.

Shelest told Krebs in a statement (PDF) that he did have an ownership stake in Nuwber, but that Nuwber has "zero cross-over or information-sharing with Onerep" and that he no longer operates any other people-search sites. Shelest admitted the bad look but said that his experience with people search gave Onerep "the best tech and team in the space."