ProcMon for Linux is Microsoft's newest open-source Linux software. ProcMon is a rewritten and re-imagined version of its Processor Monitor found on Windows within their Sysinternals suite. From a report: Microsoft explains, "The Procmon is a Linux reimagining of the classic Procmon tool from the Sysinternals suite of tools for Windows. Procmon provides a convenient and efficient way for Linux developers to trace the syscall activity on the system."

Amazon just reinvented the lowly shopping cart. The company on Tuesday unveiled the Amazon Dash Cart, which is infused with weight sensors and cameras that allow it to scan your items as you're placing them in the cart so you can skip the checkout line. From a report: The concept is kind of like a compact version of Amazon Go, a whole store that does away with the checkout experience by using hundreds of cameras on the ceiling to let customers pick up whatever items they want and walk out. "Our primary motivation for building this was to be able to save customers time," said Dilip Kumar, vice president of Amazon's physical retail and technology. "The alternative solutions are standing in the express checkout lanes or fumbling through self-checkout stations." Dash Carts will debut at Amazon's Woodland Hills, California, grocery store, when the location opens later this year. The company last November unveiled plans for the Woodland Hills store as the first location for a new supermarket chain that will be separate from its Whole Foods chain. The store will include conventional checkout lanes, too.

Intel unveiled Thunderbolt 4 on Wednesday, the next iteration of the I/O specification that provides a high-speed peripheral bus to docks, displays, external storage and eGPUs for PCs. Rather than increase the available bandwidth, however, Thunderbolt 4 provides more clarity and helps create new categories of products. From a report: Thunderbolt 4 will debut later this year as part of Intel's "Tiger Lake" CPU platform, as Intel originally announced during CES in January. We now know it will support 40Gbps throughput, but with tighter minimum specs. Thunderbolt 4 will guarantee that a pair of 4K displays will work with a Thunderbolt dock, and require Thunderbolt 4-equipped PCs to charge on at least one Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt PCs will be able to connect to either "compact" or "full" docks with up to four Thunderbolt ports. Longer Thunderbolt cables will be possible, too. One thing that doesn't seem to be changing is Thunderbolt's exclusivity. Intel developed Thunderbolt, and perhaps not coincidentally, OEM systems based on rival AMD's CPUs have never had this technology. While AMD has officially dismissed the need for Thunderbolt, with generation 4 Intel appears to have made it even harder for AMD to get it, even if it wanted to. Intel's still pitching Thunderbolt as a single standard to rule them all, but the reality up to now has been complicated. You still have to squint hard at that USB-C-shaped port to determine which of the multitude of USB specifications it meets, including whether it's a USB4 connection that happens to support Thunderbolt. To muddy things further, Thunderbolt also encompasses PCIe, DisplayPort, and USB Power Delivery standards.

For years, it was long believed that $60 is the only price that the U.S. games market could bear (and they're often more expensive in international markets). But industry leaders and journalists have questioned the stubborn stickiness of the sticker price in recent years. And the last three years saw an explosion of varying price tiers, anywhere from free (like "Fortnite") to monthly subscription services, like Apple Arcade and Xbox Game Pass. And much of the industry's total game sales are digital downloads anyway. From a report: "The shift to $69.99 should have taken place in 2013, [in my opinion]," tweeted analyst Mat Piscatella of market research firm The NPD Group. "But folks thought mobile was a threat to the console business. ... Instead we got collector's, silver and gold editions [which offer additional content or perks] that elevate above $59.99 anyway." Big publishers like Activision, Ubisoft and EA all regularly release marked up "special editions" of games. These prices often only come with marginal bonuses (a skin or emote), but it's essentially charging people extra on nothing but a promise that more content is coming. EA's disastrous launch of "Anthem" in 2018 was a high-profile example of a game that charged a premium for promised content and barely delivered. Games haven't always been $60 though. Pricing in the 1990s usually depended on your local stores. Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games were anywhere from $40 to $100 a cartridge. It wasn't until 2005 that a retail price was unofficially standardized.

BMW has detailed an overhaul to the digital systems that power its luxury vehicles, including a new map and navigation system, a revamped digital assistant, a "digital key" (first shown off at Apple's annual developer conference last month), and wireless Android Auto. But the most interesting thing BMW shared about the changes is that the company is going all-in on in-car microtransactions. From a report: Cars are more full of computers and software than ever before, which has made it possible for automakers to add new features or patch problems on the fly with over-the-air software updates. This has also presented these automakers with new ways of making money. Take Tesla, which pioneered them and currently sells access to a variety of features after purchase. It even used to ship cars with battery packs that had their range limited by software, and owners could pay a fee unlock the full capacity. BMW now wants to take this to a far more specific level. The German automaker announced on Wednesday that all cars equipped with its newest "Operating System 7" software will soon receive an update that makes it possible for the company to tinker with all sorts of functions in the car, like access to heated seats and driving assist features like automatic high beams or adaptive cruise control. And the company unsurprisingly plans to use this ability to make money.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: BMW is planning to move some features of its new cars to a subscription model, something it announced on Wednesday during a briefing for the press on the company's digital plans. BMW says that owners can "benefit in advance from the opportunity to try out the products for a trial period of one month, after which they can book the respective service for one or three years." The company also says that it could allow the second owner of a BMW to activate features that the original purchaser declined.

In fact, BMW has already started implementing this idea in some markets, allowing software unlocking of features like adaptive cruise control or high-beam assist (in the United States, those options are usually standard equipment). Other features are more whimsical, like having a Hans Zimmer-designed sound package for your electric BMW or adaptive suspension for your M-car. Indeed, the company says that its forthcoming iNext will "expand the opportunities for personalization."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Microsoft is moving forward with its promise to extend enterprise security protections to non-Windows platforms with the general release of a Linux version and a preview of one for Android. The software maker is also beefing up Windows security protections to scan for malicious firmware. The Linux and Android moves -- detailed in posts published on Tuesday here, here, and here -- follow a move last year to ship antivirus protections to macOS. Microsoft disclosed the firmware feature last week. All the new protections are available to users of Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection and require Windows 10 Enterprise Edition. Public pricing from Microsoft is either non-existent or difficult to find, but according to this site, costs range from $30 to $72 per machine per year to enterprise customers. "We are just at the beginning of our Linux journey and we are not stopping here!" Tuesday's post announcing the Linux general availability said. "We are committed to continuous expansion of our capabilities for Linux and will be bringing you enhancements in the coming months."

The Android preview, meanwhile, provides several protections, including:

- The blocking of phishing sites and other high-risk domains and URLs accessed through SMS/text, WhatsApp, email, browsers, and other apps. The features use the same Microsoft Defender
- SmartScreen services that are already available for Windows so that decisions to block suspicious sites will apply across all devices on a network.
- Proactive scanning for malicious or potentially unwanted applications and files that may be downloaded to a mobile device.
- Measures to block access to network resources when devices show signs of being compromised with malicious apps or malware.
- Integration to the same Microsoft Defender Security Center that's already available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. As for the new firmware protections, Microsoft's new offering via Microsoft Defender "scans Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, which is the successor to the traditional BIOS that most computers used during the boot process to locate and enumerate hardware installed," adds Ars. "The firmware scanner uses a new component added to virus protection already built into Defender."

Starting today, customers of Microsoft's commercial antivirus product -- Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) -- can install a first version of the product's Android port. From a report: The product, named "Microsoft Defender ATP for Android," was announced at the RSA security conference in February this year, and has reached a first public preview today. Companies that have contracted Microsoft Defender ATP protection have a new option in their dashboard where they can enable the feature and deploy an Android app to employees' devices.

This new Android app will work like a classic mobile antivirus product that can scan the phone for malicious apps and other malware, detect malicious and phishing sites while the user is browsing the web, and block users from accessing certain sites based on a predefined block-list. Microsoft says the Defender ATP for Android app also comes with hidden features, courtesy of its integration into the larger and more complex Defender ATP, Intune, and Configuration Manager platforms.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Mozilla has announced today that its highly anticipated VPN (virtual private network) service will launch later this summer, "in the next few weeks." The product has also been renamed from its original name of Firefox Private Network to its new brand of the "Mozilla VPN." The name change came after Mozilla expanded the VPN product from the initial Firefox extension to a full-device VPN, capable of routing traffic for the entire OS, including other browsers. Currently, the Mozilla VPN offers clients for Windows 10, Chromebooks, Android, and iOS devices. Mozilla said beta testers also requested a Mac client, which they plan to provide, along with a Linux app.

India has released the source code of its contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu, to the relief of privacy and security experts who have been advocating for this ever since the app launched in early April. From a report: Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology Secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney made the announcement on Tuesday, dubbing the move "opening the heart" of the Aarogya Setu app to allow engineers to inspect and tinker with the code. The app has amassed over 114 million users in less than two months -- an unprecedented scale globally. The source code of Aarogya Setu's Android app is live on GitHub with code of iOS and KaiOS apps slated to release in a "few weeks." Nearly 98% of the app's users are on the Android platform. Sawhney said the government will also offer cash prizes of up to $1,325 to security experts for identifying and reporting bugs and vulnerabilities. "Open-sourcing Aarogya Setu is a unique feat for India. No other government product anywhere in the world has been open-sourced at this scale," said Amitabh Kant, chief executive of government-run think-tank NITI Aayog, in a press conference today.

In a blog post yesterday, Samsung announced plans to launch a Samsung Pay debit card this summer. The Verge reports: Samsung will launch the card, which will be backed by a cash management account, in partnership with personal finance company SoFi, Ahn said. Samsung is also developing a "mobile-first money management platform," according to Ahn. His blog doesn't detail what features that money management platform or the upcoming debit card may have, but he does say that Samsung will share more details "in the coming weeks." Samsung joins Apple in offering a branded payment card. Google is reportedly working on its own branded payment card as well, though Google's will apparently be a debit card, like Samsung's. Google will also supposedly offer spending-tracking tools for the card.

EU-based Internet governance body RIPE is opposing a proposal to remodel core internet protocols, a proposal backed by the Chinese government, Chinese telecoms, and Chinese networking equipment vendor Huawei. From a report: Named "New IP," this proposal consists of a revamped version of the TCP/IP standards to accommodate new technologies, a "shutoff protocol" to cut off misbehaving parts of the internet, and a new "top-to-bottom" governance model that decentralizes the internet and puts it into the hands of a few crucial node operators. The New IP proposal was submitted last year to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and brought to the public's attention following a Financial Times report last month. The proposal received immediate criticism from the general public and privacy advocates due to its obvious attempt to hide internet censorship features behind a technical redesign of the TCP/IP protocol stack.

The New IP proposal was described as the Chinese government's attempt to export and impose its autocratic views onto the rest of the internet and its infrastructure. Millions of eyebrows were raised when authoritarian countries like Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia expressed support for the proposal. In a blog post this week, RIPE NCC, the regional Internet registry for Europe, West Asia, and the former USSR, formally expressed a public opinion against China New IP proposal. "Do we need New IP? I don't think we do," said Marco Hogewoning, the current acting Manager Public Policy and Internet Governance at the RIPE NCC. "Although certain technical challenges exist with the current Internet model, I do not believe that we need a whole new architecture to address them."

Facebook's dedicated Gaming app is now live on Android, months before its planned June release. From a report: The social media giant pushed the app out two months prior to its scheduled unveiling amid a global pandemic that's left people all over the world isolated at home, rapidly burning through entertainment options. The New York Times announced the upcoming release in an exclusive over the weekend, noting that Facebook's massive gaming investment has culminated in more 700 million of the sites's 2.5 billion users actively playing games through the platform monthly. The launch of a devoted app is a clear next step for content that has, until now, been the domain of the site's Gaming tab. Social engagement is the focus for the app (naturally), which will be getting an iOS version at some point in the near future (pending Apple approval).

Ghacks writes: Observant Firefox users on Windows who have updated the web browser to Firefox 75 may have noticed that the upgrade brought along with it a new scheduled tasks. The scheduled task is also added if Firefox 75 is installed on a Windows device. The task's name is Firefox Default Browser Agent and it is set to run once per day...
Mozilla says:

• "We're collecting information related to the system's current and previous default browser setting, as well as the operating system locale and version. This data cannot be associated with regular profile based telemetry data..."
• "We'll respect user configured telemetry opt-out settings by looking at the most recently used Firefox profile."
• "We'll respect custom Enterprise telemetry related policy settings if they exist. We'll also respect policy to specifically disable this task."

"Collecting telemetry is one way we're able to ensure we can understand default browser trends in a way that helps us improve Firefox. It's our hope that by better understanding more about our users and their choices around browser preferences, we can continue to build a better Firefox."

Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo writes, "Opting out can be done via the Privacy & Security section of the preferences screen. You can view collected telemetry and view your current settings at about:telemetry."

Bleeping Computer also notes that by default, "For some time, Firefox has been collecting telemetry data about how you use the browser, such as the number of web pages you visit, safebrowsing information, the number of open tabs and windows, what add-ons are installed, and more. This telemetry data is kept for 13 months and IP addresses listed in server logs are deleted every 30 days.

"On my computer, Firefox has collected over 400KB of information."

Apple will now allow push notifications to be used for advertising, so long as users agree to receive the ads first. From a report: Apple updated its App Store guidelines today with a change to its traditionally strict restrictions around push notifications. Apple has long banned apps from using notifications for "advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes," but that changes today. Apps can now send marketing notifications when "customers have explicitly opted in to receive them." Users must also be able to opt out of receiving the ads.

"Google has started testing a feature that will display the search query in the Chrome address bar rather than the actual page's URL when performing searches on Google," reports Bleeping Computer: This experimental feature is called "Query in Omnibox" and has been available as a flag in Google Chrome since Chrome 71, but is disabled by default. In a test being conducted by Google, this feature is being enabled for some users and will cause the search keyword to be displayed in the browser's address bar, or Omnibox, instead of the URL that you normally see...

When this feature is not enabled, Google will display the URL of the search in the Omnibox as you would expect. This allows you to not only properly identify the site you are on, but also to easily share the search with another user.
It's been 18 months since Wired reported that Google "wants to kill the URL.

This week now finds Bleeping Computer arguing that instead of removing URLs in one fell swoop, Google "is gradually eroding the various elements of a URL until there is nothing left."

Google has released a neural-network-powered chatbot called Meena that it claims is better than any other chatbot out there. From a report: Meena was trained on a whopping 341 gigabytes of public social-media chatter -- 8.5 times as much data as OpenAI's GPT-2. Google says Meena can talk about pretty much anything, and can even make up (bad) jokes. Open-ended conversation that covers a wide range of topics is hard, and most chatbots can't keep up. At some point most say things that make no sense or reveal a lack of basic knowledge about the world. A chatbot that avoids such mistakes will go a long way toward making AIs feel more human, and make characters in video games more lifelike. To put Meena to the test, Google has developed a new metric it calls the Sensibleness and Specificity Average (SSA), which captures important attributes for natural conversations, such as whether each utterance makes sense in context -- which many chatbots can do -- and is specific to what has just been said, which is harder.

BetaNews: Over the years Microsoft has taken numerous controversial decisions with Windows 10, including installing sponsored apps, using the Start menu to advertise apps it thinks you might be interested in, and -- of course -- the various forms of data-collecting telemetry. Now it has been discovered that more ads could be on their way. A Windows researcher has uncovered ads in WordPad encouraging people to try out Word, Excel and PowerPoint online. News of the ads was shared on Twitter by Rafael Rivera, and it was met with a mixture of indignation and reluctant acceptance. Reaction was mixed because while some people saw little wrong with Microsoft advertising a free service rather than trying to encourage people to part with money, there was still a widespread feeling that it was an invasive move.

What's next after you've successfully imitated the look, taste and smell of real beef? For Impossible Foods, the choice is obvious: move on to pork and sausage. From a report: Like the faux burger that was introduced in 2016, how the meatless pork tastes obviously depends on the chef's abilities. But at Kumi in Las Vegas' Mandalay Bay, there was something for everyone, and apparently, the Input team was among the "first people in the world to try it." So naturally, we ate enough to make ourselves sick (OK maybe just Cheyenne). We had Bahn mi, meatballs, noodles, spring rolls (swoon), and shumai -- and it was all absolutely bomb. Again, credits to the chef, but a lot of this is Impossible, too. In each case, the texture was spot on and absorbed flavor much like the real meat would. As someone who isn't a vegetarian, one of the things I loved the most about the Impossible Burger is that the texture of Impossible's plant-based ingredient is akin to that of real meat. And the same goes for the Impossible Pork. We tried the Impossible Pork in a variety of different dishes and, let me tell you, every single one of them was delicious. The flavor is tasty, the texture is as crispy and slightly rough as traditional pork, and all I kept thinking was how insane it is that Impossible can make this happen.

"First they came for our headphone jacks. Now, they're taking our ports," writes CNET: Reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has reported that the company is gearing up to remove the Lightning connector from the flagship iPhone released in 2021... Kuo predicts that having a totally wireless phone will help differentiate the flagship iPhone from all other models in the lineup. Having no physical ports mean iPhones will have less moving parts and it can improve water resistance or make more room for a bigger battery...

We've also seen other rumors indicating that Apple may bundle AirPods with the new iPhones, which makes sense if we get a portless phone. Apple would not be the first to experiment with a portless phone: Other companies have shown off concepts, like the Vivo Apex from earlier in 2019.