Microsoft is releasing its first big update to Windows 11 today, and it includes a lot of new additions. From a report: A public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will be available today in the US, alongside redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. The first big Windows 11 update will also include a bunch of improvements to the taskbar. The public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will allow users to install apps from Amazon's Appstore. The Verge points to workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11 unofficially. Back to more changes: The biggest changes in this Windows 11 update are related to the taskbar. The time and date will finally be available on multiple monitors in Windows 11, something that was missing at launch. The weather widget also returns to the taskbar in this update, and a new mute / unmute feature in the taskbar will be available for Microsoft Teams calls. You'll also be able to quickly screen share a specific app or window from the taskbar directly into a Microsoft Teams call. Microsoft has also redesigned the Media Player and Notepad apps for Windows 11. Notepad now includes multi-step undo, an improved search interface, and dark mode support. The new Media Player app is designed to replace Groove Music and Windows Media Player and includes support for both audio and video and a design that better matches Windows 11's UI improvements.

Apple faces competition from many different brands all offering Android alternatives, but Xiaomi looks to be the most determined to beat it in the high-end phone market. From a report: As the South China Morning Post reports, Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun posted on the microblogging platform Weibo on Tuesday, stating, "[We aim to] fully benchmark against Apple in [terms of] product and experience, and become China's biggest high-end brand in the next three years." Lei Jun isn't classing this as just a competition, though, it's "a war of life and death" apparently. That claim is backed up by some serious investment promises being made by the company. As MacRumors reports, Xiaomi already operates 10,000 retail stores in China, but intends to increase that to 30,000 by 2025. Competing with and beating Apple means producing smartphones that outperform the iPhone in all areas, so Xiaomi is investing $16 billion in research and development over the next five years.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Use of Google Analytics has now been found to breach European Union privacy laws in France -- after a similar decision was reached in Austria last month. The French data protection watchdog, the CNIL, said today that an unnamed local website's use of Google Analytics is non-compliant with the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) -- breaching Article 44 which covers personal data transfers outside the bloc to so-called third countries which are not considered to have essentially equivalent privacy protections. The U.S. fails this critical equivalence test on account of having sweeping surveillance laws which do not provide non-U.S. citizens with any way to know whether their data is being acquired, how it's being used or to seek redress for any misuse.

France's CNIL has been investigating one of 101 complaints filed by European privacy advocacy group, noyb, back in August 2020 -- after the bloc's top court invalidated the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield agreement on data transfers. Since then (indeed, long before) the legality of transatlantic transfers of personal data have been clouded in uncertainty. While it has taken EU regulators some time to act on illegal data transfers -- despite an immediate warning from the European Data Protection Board of no grace period in the wake of the July 2020 CJEU ruling (aka 'Schrems II) -- decisions are now finally starting to flow. Including another by the European Data Protection Supervisor last month, also involving Google Analytics. In France, the CNIL has ordered the website which was the target of one of noyb's complaints to comply with the GDPR -- and "if necessary, to stop using this service under the current conditions" -- giving it a deadline of one month to comply.

"[A]lthough Google has adopted additional measures to regulate data transfers in the context of the Google Analytics functionality, these are not sufficient to exclude the accessibility of this data for U.S. intelligence services," the CNIL writes in a press release announcing the decision. "There is therefore a risk for French website users who use this service and whose data is exported." The CNIL does leave open the door to continued use of Google Analytics -- but only with substantial changes that would ensure only "anonymous statistical data" gets transferred. The French regulator is also very emphatic that under "current conditions" use of Google Analytics is non-compliant -- and may therefore need to cease in order for the site in question to comply with the GDPR. The CNIL also suggests use of an alternative analytics tool which does not involve a transfer outside the EU to end the breach. Additionally, it says it's launched an evaluation program to determine which website audience measurement and analysis services may be exempt from the need to obtain user consent (i.e. because they only produce anonymous statistical data which can be exported legally under GDPR). Which suggests the CNIL could issue guidance in future that recommends GDPR compliant alternatives to Google Analytics.

Google today announced the first developer release of Android 13. These very early releases, which are only meant for developers and aren't available through over-the-air updates, typically don't include too many user-facing changes. From a report: That's true this time as well, but even in this early release, the company is already showing off a few changes that will impact how you'll use your Android phone. Unlike with Android 12, Google plans to have two developer releases and then launch a beta in April, a month earlier than in 2021. The final release could come as early as August, based on Google's roadmap, whereas Android 12 launched in early October. All of this is happening while Android 12L, the Android release for large-screen devices, is still in development, too, though Google notes that it will bring some of those features to Android 13 as well. These include improved support for tablets, foldables and Android apps on Chromebooks. One of the most visible changes in Android 13 so far is that Google will bring the dynamic color feature of Material You, which by default takes its cues from your home screen image to all app icons. Developers will have to supply a monochromatic app icon for this to work, which many will hopefully do, because the current mix of themed and un-themed icons doesn't make for a great look. For now, this will only be available on Pixel devices, though, and Google says it will work with its partners to bring it to more devices. With this release, Google supports the Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 6, Pixel 5a 5G, Pixel 5, Pixel 4a (5G), Pixel 4a, Pixel 4 XL, and Pixel 4.

Ars Technica recently pointed out that the concept of downvoting posts and comments "has been a staple of the Internet for decades, appearing on sites such as Slashdot, Reddit, and Ars Technica."

And Twitter is now experimenting with its own version, according to the International Business Times: After initially announcing the launch of a "downvoting" feature in July, Twitter revealed on Wednesday that it would be taking the feature to the global testing stage, even as questions remain about whether a more positive or negative environment is fostered on the platform as a result. The company announced that the "downvotes" will expand to more people on iOS and Android devices, and reiterated that the votes are not public, but can help the company determine what type of content different people actually wish to see.

"We learned a lot about the types of replies you don't find relevant and we're expanding this test — more of you on web and soon iOS and Android will have the option to use reply downvoting.

"Downvotes aren't public, but they'll help inform us of the content people want to see...".

Twitter has not yet announced when the "downvote" feature will be rolled out to all users, or if it ever will be. While the test should help the company figure out if the downvote option promotes a more hateful environment or fosters a better experience, their final decision is yet to be revealed.
The Washington Post includes a screenshot of the downvoting button, describing it as a small arrow to the right of the like button.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday approved legislation that, if passed into law, would force Apple to let users install apps from outside of the App Store. From a report: The bipartisan 21-1 vote is a strong endorsement for the bill from Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal, Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn and eight other cosponsors, but it still faces a long road to get a vote in the full Senate. The bill seeks to loosen the duopoly that Apple and Alphabet's Google have over mobile app distribution, part of Congress's push to curb the power of U.S. technology giants. "If you're a consumer, what this measure means to you is cheaper prices, more innovation, better products and more consumer safeguards by opening the walled garden so that new entrants are willing and able to compete on values like privacy and children's safety," Blumenthal said during the hearing. Google and Apple "own the rails of the app economy, much as the railroad companies did at the start of the last century."

Blumenthal estimated the value of the app store market at about $100 billion a year. The measure, S. 2710, would require Apple to let users install apps on their phones and other devices from sources on the web or alternative app stores, a process that's called sideloading. This provision would most impact Apple. While Google offers its Play Store on mobile devices, it doesn't bar users from downloading Android apps elsewhere. Sideloading, which Apple has said poses security risks for consumers, would allow apps to avoid Apple's commissions, which range from 15% to 30%.

To make it harder for stalkers to abuse them, Apple included (and has since upgraded) several safety features that will alert someone to the presence of a nearby AirTag that's not their own, including an audible beep. But according to PCMag, one Etsy seller was, up until very recently, selling AirTags with the speaker physically disabled, raising privacy concerns once again. From a report: The AirTag, a small, easy-to-carry device about the size of a quarter, relies on Apple's Find My network which leverages millions of Apple devices to discreetly keep tabs on the location of the trackers and report that information back to each tag's registered user. The general idea behind the AirTag was that users could attach one to their keys, their backpack, or to other valuable items, and be able to quickly locate them if lost. To prevent their misuse, such as using an AirTag to track someone without their knowledge, iOS users would be eventually notified if a tracker registered to someone else was nearby, while Android users would have to rely on an audible beep that would start chirping three days after an AirTag was separated from its owner.

The product was ripe for abuse -- a concern we emphasized in our initial review of the AirTags -- and a couple of months after their debut Apple addressed those concerns with promised updates that would see Android users getting similar notifications as iOS users when an AirTag was nearby through a new Tracker Detect app that allowed Android users to more easily spot the devices. And the timeframe for when the trackers would start beeping after being away from its registered owner was shortened to a "random time inside a window that lasts between 8 and 24 hours," according to a CNET report.

Mozilla is rolling out new updates to its mobile and desktop VPN offerings, the company announced on Tuesday. From a report: With the launch of Mozilla VPN 2.7, the company is bringing one of Firefox's popular add-ons, Multi-Account Containers, to the desktop platform and also introducing a multi-hop feature to the Android and iOS version of the VPN service. Firefox's Multi-Account Containers allow users to separate different parts of their online activities, such as work, shopping and banking. Instead of having to open a new window or different browser to check your work email, you can isolate that activity in a container tab, which prevents other sites from tracking your activity across the web. The company says combining the add-on with Mozilla's VPN adds an extra layer of protection to users' compartmentalized browsing activity and also adds extra protection to their locational information.

Google is widely rolling out a new Google Messages feature to beta users that allows the Android messaging app to correctly interpret emoji reactions sent from the iOS Messages app, 9to5Google reports. From a report: The feature appears to be live in version 20220121_02_RC00 of the app, according to Droid-Life, but not for every user. Although it didn't work on every phone we tried, we were able to get it working on an Oppo Find X3 Pro, which is more than can be said for when the feature initially started appearing last November. The feature fixes a long-standing issue that can affect SMS chats between iPhone and Android users. When an iPhone user reacts to an Android message with emoji, the Android user typically sees this reaction sent as an entirely separate text message, resulting in confusion and lots of unnecessary clutter.

Moving halfway across America, from Colorado to New York, Austin and Valerie McNulty had a bad experience after hiring a moving company that subcontracted the work to another moving company.

But they'd also included an Apple AirTag in one of their boxes, Newsweek reports: A moving guy reportedly told Austin that he "just picked up the stuff" and would take another day or two. Due to the AirTag, the couple knew the moving guy was not in Colorado but was just less than five hours away in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. As for the family's possessions, which were supposed to be inventoried and in a safe location, GPS tracking showed that neither action allegedly occurred. "It turns out [the items] just stayed overnight in a sketchy part of New Jersey," Austin told Newsweek.

According to Austin, that same driver who allegedly lied about his whereabouts told Austin in a phone call that he went to see "his lady" and that was part of the delay....

"I think we would have been waiting a lot longer for our home goods to arrive [if we didn't have the AirTag]," Valerie said.... "I would say that AirTags are fairly inexpensive and it's an easy way to hold the third parties accountable."
"When we brought up the fact that we knew his exact location he hung up on us," Valerie McNulty said in a Facebook post (which has been shared more than 4,600 times) — although the driver did eventually call back a few minutes later and the items were delivered the next day.

ABC News reports that the driver "was put on probation" according to his moving company — which also added that it "plans to use AirTags for tracking their drivers in the future."

Valerie McNulty argued to ABC News that "I was never tracking the driver, that was never my intention. I was tracking my belongings." Yet the Washington Post notes the story "comes amid a robust debate about the small plastic-and-metal disks, which launched last spring: Are they creepy or helpful? The trackers have been found on expensive cars, presumably so they could be stolen. But they can also be attached to commonly lost valuables, like keys, to make finding them easier."

Apple Insider reports a Pennsylvania state legislator is even proposing legislation making it a crime to track someone else's location or belongings without their consent, adding that if passed in Pennsylvania the law would "create a precedent for other states to follow suit if passed."

ZDNet quotes a remark from the Director of Cyber-Security at the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the BBC, calling Apple's AirTags "a perfect tool for stalking." But ZDNet columnist Chris Matyszczyk adds "That's the problem with technology, isn't it? For every potential good use, there are at least several pain-inducing, criminal-pleasing, world-ending uses. Too often, the bad outweighs the good, especially in the public eyes and ears. Here, though, is a tale of a woman who's glad she used an AirTag for her own surveillance purposes....

This whole tale makes me wonder, though, what we've come to and where we're going.... If our default is that we can trust no one and fear everyone, how can we ever really get along?

The Android malware known as BRATA has added new and dangerous features to its latest version, including GPS tracking, the capacity to use multiple communication channels, and a function that performs a factory reset on the device to wipe all traces of malicious activity. BleepingComputer reports: BRATA was first spotted by Kaspersky back in 2019 as an Android RAT (remote access tool) that mainly targeted Brazilian users. In December 2021, a report by Cleafy underscored the emergence of the malware in Europe, where it was seen targeting e-banking users and stealing their credentials with the involvement of fraudsters posing as bank customer support agents. Analysts at Cleafy continued to monitor BRATA for new features, and in a new report published today, illustrate how the malware continues to evolve.

The latest versions of the BRATA malware now target e-banking users in the UK, Poland, Italy, Spain, China, and Latin America. Each variant focuses on different banks with dedicated overlay sets, languages, and even different apps to target specific audiences. The authors use similar obfuscation techniques in all versions, such as wrapping the APK file into an encrypted JAR or DEX package. This obfuscation successfully bypasses antivirus detections [...]. On that front, BRATA now actively seeks signs of AV presence on the device and attempts to delete the detected security tools before proceeding to the data exfiltration step.

The best way to avoid being infected by Android malware is to install apps from the Google Play Store, avoid APKs from shady websites, and always scan them with an AV tool before opening. During installation, pay close attention to the requested permissions and avoid granting any that appear unnecessary for the app's core functionality. Finally, monitor battery consumption and network traffic volumes to identify any inexplicable spikes that may be attributed to malicious processes running in the background.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: The next class of Chrome OS devices may be targeted at the gaming market -- more than one Chromebook is set to release with a full RGB keyboard. Similar to how Chrome OS offers support for Linux apps and Android apps, there's been a long-running effort -- codenamed Borealis -- to get Steam and various Linux-compatible PC games running in a virtual machine on your Chromebook. While there's yet to be any formal announcement of Steam games for Chromebooks, work has steadily continued since the project was first discovered.

Whether through Steam games or game streaming services, it seems Google's gaming ambitions for Chrome OS may be coming to fruition in the near future. According to changes to Chrome OS code in the last few weeks, Google has begun working to support Chromebooks with full color RGB keyboards -- you can't have a product for gamers without RGB, right? Right? -- starting with a new feature flag. From what we can find, each keyboard key can be individually customized to your liking to vary the intensity of the red, green, and blue lighting to create different colors and adjust the keyboard's overall backlight brightness. For now, this is only possible through an internal command for Chrome OS developers to use in testing. In time, one would assume there would be a tool within Chrome OS to let gamers change the colors of their keyboards.

At first glance, one could argue that this is just about supporting the many USB and Bluetooth connected keyboards you can buy with RGB lighting built in. However, with a bit more digging, we've found that rather than being a generic feature, Chrome OS's RGB support is being prepared for a select few unreleased devices. So who is going to be making the first gaming Chromebooks? For the time being, there appear to be at least three hardware codenames associated with RGB keyboards. The first two are Vell and Taniks, both of which are based on Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake laptop processors. [...] A third hardware codename attached to RGB keyboards for Chrome OS is Ripple. However, rather than being the name of a particular Chromebook, it seems that Ripple is the internal name of a detachable keyboard, like that of the Pixel Slate.

Microsoft is planning to launch a public preview of its Android apps for Windows 11 next month, alongside some taskbar improvements and redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. Windows chief Panos Panay outlined the upcoming changes to Windows 11 in a blog post today, and they appear to be part of Windows 11's first big update. From a report: The taskbar improvements include a mute and unmute feature and likely the ability to show a clock on secondary monitors. Both were missing at the launch of Windows 11, but Microsoft is still working on improving the taskbar further to bring back missing functionality like drag and drop. The upcoming Windows 11 next month will also include the weather widget returning to the taskbar, something Microsoft started testing last month. Microsoft is also redesigning its Notepad and Media Player apps, and both include dark modes and design tweaks that more closely match Windows 11.

The big new addition will be Android apps on Windows 11, though. Panay says this will be a "public preview," indicating that the feature will still be in beta when it's widely available next month. Microsoft first started testing Android apps on Windows 11 with testers in October, and the feature allows you to install a limited number of apps from Amazon's Appstore. There are a variety of workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11, but Microsoft isn't officially supporting this. Panay also shared a variety of stats about how important Windows has become over the past couple of years. Windows 10 and Windows 11 now run on 1.4 billion devices each month, and the PC market has experienced strong growth throughout the pandemic.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Aaron Gordon: Not quite three years ago, I bought a Pixel 3, Google's flagship phone at the time. It has been a good phone. I like that it's not too big. I dropped it a bunch, but it didn't break. And the battery life has not noticeably changed since the day I got it. I think of phones in much the same way I think of refrigerators or stoves. It's an appliance, something I need but feel no attachment to, and as long as it keeps fulfilling that need, I don't want to spend money replacing it for no real reason. The Pixel 3 fulfills my needs, so I don't want to spend $600 on the Pixel 6, which seems to be just another phone that does all the phone things.

But I have to get rid of it because Google has stopped supporting all Pixel 3s. Despite being just three years old, no Pixel 3 will ever receive another official security update. Installing security updates is the one basic thing everyone needs to do for their own digital security. If you don't even get them, then you're vulnerable to every security flaw discovered since your last patch. In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, "We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device."

This has been a problem with Android for as long as Android has existed. In 2015, my colleague Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote a farewell to Android because of its terrible software support and spotty upgrade rollouts. Android has long blamed this obvious issue on the fact that updates need to run through the cellphone company and phone manufacturer before being pushed to the user. At the time, Google didn't make any Android phones; the Nexus line was the closest thing, a partnership with other manufacturers like Motorola and HTC (I had one of those, too). But for the past six years, Google has made the Pixel line of phones. They are Google-made phones, meaning Google can't blame discontinuing security updates on other manufacturers, and yet, it announced that's exactly what it would do. Gordon goes on to say that he's "switching to an iPhone for the first time," noting how the most recent version of iOS can be installed on phones going as far back as the iPhone 6s, which was released more than six years ago.

"Unless you routinely destroy your phone within two or three years, there's no justification from a sustainability perspective to keep using Android phones," he adds. "Of course, Apple is only good by comparison, as it also manufactures devices that are difficult to repair with an artificially short shelf life. It just happens to have a longer shelf life than Google."

Washington DC, Texas, Washington state and Indiana announced the latest lawsuit against Big Tech Monday, alleging that Google deceived users by collecting their location data even when they believed that kind of tracking was disabled. TechCrunch reports: "Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access," DC Attorney General Karl Racine said. "The truth is that contrary to Google's representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data." Racine described Google's privacy practices as "bold misrepresentations" that undermine consumer privacy. His office began investigating how Google handles user location data after reporting from the Associated Press in 2018 found that many Google apps across iOS and Android recorded location data even when users have chosen privacy options that explicitly say they won't. The AP coordinated with computer science researchers at Princeton to verify its findings.

The lawsuit argues that Google created a location tracking system that's impossible for users to opt out of and that it misled users about how privacy settings could protect their data within apps and at the device level on Android. It also accuses Google of relying on deceptive dark pattern design to force users into making choices counter to their own interests. Racine's office is pursuing an injunction against Google as well as seeking to force the company to pay out profits that it made from user data collected by misleading consumers about their privacy.

"Qt, the framework that powers the KDE desktop, is announcing support for ads in client-side applications," reports Neowin: This means that application developers will now be able to serve ads in traditional desktop applications.... Windows users have been dealing with this in Metro UI apps since Windows 8 and it's something that's never gone over well on the desktop.

While it's doubtful you'll see ads in KDE's core applications, it would be possible for distributions that wish to further monetize their work to fork these applications, placing ads in them.... According to the documentation, the advertising plugin supports a variety of platforms. They are as follows:

- Windows 10
- Ubuntu 20.04
- Raspbian Buster
- macOS
- Android 7.0
— iOS

"Our offering aims to disrupt the IoT industry," explains Qt's press release, "enabling new business models and business cases that before were not possible."

Reactions have been mixed. Comments on Phoronix ranged from calling it "a great way for boost development on KDE" to "Not sure if I like this."

Thanks to Slashdot reader segaboy81 for sharing the story

On Wednesday, Google announced that it is getting rid of the G Suite legacy free edition, "which allowed those that snuck in before 2012 to get free Google apps services tied to a custom domain rather than Gmail," reports Android Police. Since a lot of people will be left "in the lurch" after the shutdown, attorneys at Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith are opening an investigating into the matter for a potential class-action lawsuit. From the report: No lawsuit has been filed yet; the attorneys involved are just collecting information for a potential lawsuit in the future once all the facts are straight (and Google has had time to reconsider its actions). When we covered the original news of the legacy G Suite shutdown, it seemed unreasonable to us, because customers using those legacy accounts are unable to transfer purchases or things like grandfathered subscription discounts to new accounts. When we asked if moving purchases between accounts might be possible, a Google representative confirmed it wasn't. [...]

That means years of purchases tied to Google Play -- potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars of assets like movie and music purchases for a given customer, across thousands of affected customers -- could be tied to broken accounts because of the transition. Google explicitly confirmed to us that was the case, though customers could elect to keep using their broken suspended account alongside a working one. In essence, everyone that migrated to one of these accounts while they were still offered (from 2006 at least until 2012, so far as I can tell) will have to pay extra money to keep their existing purchases tied to a fully working account, and we think that's pretty ridiculous.

Windows Central got their hands on a pre-release build of Microsoft's canceled Andromeda OS running on a Lumia 950. As noted in the article, "Andromeda OS was never intended to ship on the Lumia 950, or any Windows phone on the market at that time." They're using a 950 because Microsoft used them to help develop Andromeda OS internally. Also worth mentioning is the fact that Andromeda OS is no longer in development. Android is the OS that will be powering future Microsoft devices, such as the future Surface Duo devices. Here's an excerpt from the report: Microsoft decided to do something rather unique with Andromeda OS, and build out OS experience around a journaling/inking experience. On the lockscreen, the user is able to begin taking notes directly onto the lockscreen UI just by putting pen to screen. You don't have to initiate a special mode, or enter an app first, just take your Surface Pen and begin writing, and the lockscreen will store that ink for you to see every time you unlock your device. [...] Unlocking the device would take you to your home screen, which on Andromeda OS is another inking canvas. This canvas is called the Journal (though this later became the Microsoft Whiteboard app) which acted as a digital notebook with the ability to take notes with a pen, add sticky notes, insert images and 3D objects, and more. The Journal experience would always be running in the background, with your phone apps running above it.

Andromeda OS was also gesture based. The on-screen Start and Cortana buttons would disappear when opening an app to provide a full-screen experience, so to access those areas, you'd swipe in from the left for Start, and from the right for Cortana, which is also where your notifications were stored. Yes, Cortana and your Notifications were one of the same on Andromeda OS, with Cortana becoming your "manager" of notifications missed or stored for dealing with later. A swipe down from the top would reveal the Control Center, which is feature that's now shipping on Windows 11, but started life here on Andromeda OS. Feature-wise, it's exactly the same, with the ability to control things like Wi-Fi, brightness, volume, and music playback. It also features Fluent Design acrylic blur effects, as do many other parts of the UI, even in this unfinished state.

[...] There was also an experimental "Radial UX Menu" mode, where instead of gestures swiping in things like Start and Cortana, swiping would present you with a UI full of circular buttons for things like Start, switching apps, and more. This may have been an alternative to on-screen navigation, as not everyone was familiar with full gesture navigation at the time just yet. Or, it could have been an alternative method of navigation for when you were using a pen. Who knows. One thing we're not able to show you is the Continuum mode that Microsoft was also working on for Andromeda OS, as unfortunately it appears to be broken in the build we have. That said, we do know what it was going to be like. Essentially, Microsoft was building out Continuum to be a true desktop experience, with windowed app experiences, the ability to store icons on the desktop, and more. If you'd prefer to see Andromeda OS in action instead of read about it, you can watch Windows Central's video here.

Alphabet's Google has hired former PayPal executive Arnold Goldberg to run its payments division and set a new course for the business after it scrapped a push into banking. Bloomberg reports: The move is part of a broader strategy to team up with a wider range of financial services, including cryptocurrencies, said Bill Ready, Google's president of commerce. The business, known for the Google Pay system and mobile wallet, has largely avoided the crypto industry. The changes follow a major turnabout in October. Google had spent years planning a digital checking and savings service, lining up 11 banking partners for the launch. But that month the company nixed the proposed offering, called Plex. Instead, Google wants to become the connective tissue for the entire consumer finance industry, not just certain partners, according to Ready. "We're not a bank -- we have no intention of being a bank," Ready said in an interview. "Some past efforts, at times, would unwittingly wade into those spaces."

Tom Noyes, an industry analyst, estimated in 2020 that Google accounted for 4% of contactless payments in the U.S., calling the service "largely a failure." As part of the overhaul, Google will focus more on being a "comprehensive digital wallet" that includes digital tickets, airline passes and vaccine passports, Ready said. He didn't provide an update on the current number of Google Pay users. The company is integrating payments more tightly with Google's shopping efforts, such as a feature that shows consumer loyalty cards and personal discounts directly in search results. Google also is trying to position itself as more welcoming to merchants than Amazon. In 2020, Google eliminated fees for retailers selling on its shopping service.

Tiptoeing into crypto also could help Google entice users. Google has partnered with companies, including Coinbase and BitPay, to store crypto assets in digital cards, while still having users pay in traditional currencies. Ready said Google is looking to do more of these partnership, though the company still isn't accepting crypto for transactions. "Crypto is something we pay a lot of attention to," he said. "As user demand and merchant demand evolves, we'll evolve with it."

Meta may be the loudest company building AR and VR hardware. Microsoft has HoloLens. Apple is working on something, too. But don't count out Google. The Verge: The search giant has recently begun ramping up work on an AR headset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship in 2024, according to two people familiar with the project who requested anonymity to speak without the company's permission. Like forthcoming headsets from Meta and Apple, Google's device uses outward-facing cameras to blend computer graphics with a video feed of the real world, creating a more immersive, mixed reality experience than existing AR glasses from the likes of Snap and Magic Leap. Early prototypes being developed at a facility in the San Francisco Bay Area resemble a pair of ski goggles and don't require a tethered connection to an external power source.

Google's headset is still early in development without a clearly defined go-to-market strategy, which indicates that the 2024 target year may be more aspirational than set in stone. The hardware is powered by a custom Google processor, like its newest Google Pixel smartphone, and runs on Android, though recent job listings indicate that a unique OS is in the works. Given power constraints, Google's strategy is to use its data centers to remotely render some graphics and beam them into the headset via an internet connection. I'm told that the Pixel team is involved in some of the hardware pieces, but it's unclear if the headset will ultimately be Pixel-branded.