Global PC shipments declined in calendar Q3 by 15 percent year-on-year thanks to reduced demand and lingering supply chain issues, according to number cruncher IDC. From a report: The Q3 slowdown is similar to that seen in Q2 2022, when shipments crashed by 15.3 percent year-on-year. The slowed growth didn't just start this year. Signs first emerged in Q3 2021 as Chromebooks hit market saturation. For perspective, volumes still remain higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shipments also aren't as low as they could be thanks to companies like Apple that drove business with promotions. As industry-wide supply hit record lows, Apple supply increased to make up for lost orders during China's Q2 lockdowns, according to IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani. [...] Apple came in fourth place in terms of market share for Q3 PC shipments behind Lenovo (first), HP (second), and Dell (third). While other companies declined in year-on-year growth, Apple soared with a net positive 40.2 percent increase in shipments year-on-year to 10.06 million Macs.

You know how grocery stores have rolls of tear-off plastic bags in their produce sections for holding vegetables and fruit?

Last week California's governor signed a law that will force supermarkets to discontinue them before 2025, reports the Bay Area Newsgroup, replacing them with either recycled paper bags or bags made of compostable plastic: "This kind of plastic film is not recyclable...." said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste, an environmental group that supported the bill. "It flies around landfills and flies out of trucks. It gets stuck on gears at recycling facilities. And it contaminates compost. It's a problematic product we want to get rid of...."

"We're not banning the bags," Lapis said. "We are just requiring a more-sustainable type of bags. You'll still have a place to put your fruits and vegetables that won't leak."
The article notes that Trader Joe's is already using compostable produce bags, and Eben Schwartz, marine debris manager for the California Coastal Commission suggests that consumers can also just try opting for paper bags. "It's significantly more recyclable. And it will break down if it finds its way into the marine environment."

But he also offered one more piece of advice: "Decide whether you really need your bananas in a bag. You probably don't."

A new version of a quarter-century-old window manager shows that there's still room for improvement and innovation, even in established, mature tools. The Register reports: IceWM is [...] a traditional stacking window manager allowing you to open, move, and resize windows. It's relatively simple, easy, and quick to learn. By default, it also provides an app launcher and an app switcher, using the familiar Windows 95 model: a hierarchical start menu and a taskbar. If you do a minimal install of openSUSE, you get IceWM. It's also one of the defaults in the lightweight antiX and Absolute Linux distros.

With such a relatively simple remit, it's good to see that development is still going on. Version 2.0 appeared late in 2020, removing a legacy protocol and adding a new image rendering engine. Now version 3.0 is out with a whole new feature: tabbed windows. Reminiscent of one of The Reg FOSS desk's favorite OSes, the late and great Be OS, tabbed windows turn the title bar into a tab that is less than the full width of the window. In IceWM 3, this allows you to attach windows together to form one entity that can be moved and sized in a single operation â" but the contents of the different windows can be accessed individually using each one's tab. In other words, it works like browser tabs, but the different windows don't need to be from the same parent application. "IceWM's new tabbed windows are the sort of relatively simple improvement to the very well-established metaphor of window management that this vulture really likes to see: small, elegant, and yet helpful," adds The Register's Liam Proven. "We feel that there's plenty more room for improvement within this space. For instance, very few window managers offer the choice of where the title bar (or tab) is located; on a widescreen, placing them on the side, as wm2 and wmx do, would save valuable vertical pixels."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: A man who was arrested over a Facebook parody aimed at his local police department is trying to take his case to the Supreme Court. He has sought help from an unlikely source, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Monday. "Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government?" the brief asked. "This was a surprise to America's Finest News Source and an uncomfortable learning experience for its editorial team." The source is, of course, The Onion. Or, as the satirical website described itselfin the brief (PDF),"the single most powerful and influential organization in human history."

The Parma, Ohio, area man in question, Anthony Novak, spent four days in jail over a Facebook page he created in 2016 that mocked his local police department. He was charged with using a computer to disrupt police functions, but a jury found him not guilty. Mr. Novak says his civil rights were violated, and he is trying to sue the city for damages. A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit earlier this year, saying that the police had qualified immunity, and an appeals court upheld that decision. Now the high court is reviewing his request to take up the matter. One of Mr. Novak's lawyers, Patrick Jaicomo, said in an interview Monday that last month he contacted Jordan LaFlure, the managing editor of The Onion, which is based in Chicago, to make him aware of the case and see if he would be interested in helping raise attention. "They heard the story, and they were like, 'Oh my god, this is something that could really put all of our people in the crosshairs if we rub someone the wrong way with one of our stories,'" Mr. Jaicomo said. [...]

On Tuesday, a lawyer representing Parma, Richard Rezie, said that the courts had dismissed Mr. Novak's lawsuit as groundless and agreed that his rights had not been violated. The judges "did not base their opinions on parody, freedom of speech, or the need for a disclaimer," Mr. Rezie said, adding that Mr. Novak "went beyond mimicry" when he reproduced a police warning about his fake page, but claimed that the Parma site was the fake and his was the "official" page. "Falsely copying an official warning along with a claim to be the authentic Facebook page is not parody," Mr. Rezie said, adding that Mr. Novak also deleted comments from readers who realized his page was fake. In Mr. Jaicomo's view, The Onion's brief used parody itself to make the point that parody is important and protected speech. "The Onion cannot stand idly by in the face of a ruling that threatens to disembowel a form of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, that is particularly potent in the realm of political debate, and that, purely incidentally, forms the basis of The Onion's writers' paychecks," the brief said. It pointed to The Onion's history of blatantly ridiculous headlines: "Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons." "Children, Creepy Middle-Aged Weirdos Swept Up in Harry Potter Craze." "Kitten Thinks of Nothing but Murder All Day." A footnote reads "See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The Onion, Mar. 27, 2017."

The brief also said that the case posed a threat to The Onion's business model. "This was only the latest occasion on which the absurdity of actual events managed to eclipse what The Onion's staff could make up," it said. "Much more of this, and the front page of The Onion would be indistinguishable from The New York Times."

One piece of news from Tesla's AI Day presentation on Friday that was overshadowed by the company's humanoid "Optimus" robot and Dojo supercomputer was the improvements to Tesla's Full Self Driving software. According to Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy, "there are now 160,000 customers running the beta software, compared to 2,000 from this time last year," reports The Verge. From the report: In total, Tesla says there have been 35 software releases of FSD. In a Q&A at the end of the presentation, Musk made another prediction -- he's made a few before -- that the technology would be ready for a worldwide rollout by the end of this year but acknowledged the regulatory and testing hurdles that remained before that happens. Afterward, Tesla's tech lead for Autopilot motion planning, Paril Jain, showed how FSD has improved in specific interactions and can make "human-like" decisions. For example, when a Tesla makes a left turn into an intersection, it can choose a trajectory that doesn't make close calls with obstacles like people crossing the street.

It's known that every Tesla can provide datasets to build the models that FSD uses, and according to Tesla's engineering manager Phil Duan, now Tesla will start building and processing detailed 3D structures from that data. They said the cars are also improving decision-making in different environmental situations, like night, fog, and rain. Tesla trains the company's AI software on its supercomputer, then feeds the results to customers' vehicles via over-the-air software updates. To do this, it processes video feeds from Tesla's fleet of over 1 million camera-equipped vehicles on the road today and has a simulator built in Unreal Engine that is used to improve Autopilot.

NASA announced Thursday that it plans to study the possibility of using SpaceX's Crew Dragon vehicle to boost the aging Hubble Space Telescope into a higher orbit. Ars Technica reports: The federal agency has signed a "Space Act Agreement" with SpaceX to conduct a six-month study to determine the practicability of Dragon docking with the 32-year-old telescope and boosting it into a higher orbit. The study is not exclusive, meaning that other companies can propose similar concepts with alternative rockets and spacecraft. [...] Among the questions the new Hubble study will answer is the cost of such a mission and its technical feasibility. The principal goal is to boost Hubble's altitude from its current level of 535 km to 600 km, the same altitude it was at when first launched in 1990. Since the fifth and final servicing mission in 2009, Hubble has slowly been losing altitude, and this process is expected to accelerate as the telescope gets lower.

The telescope's project manager, Patrick Crouse, said during a teleconference with reporters that in absence of a re-boost mission, NASA might have to launch a propulsion module to the telescope by the end of the 2020s. This would ensure Hubble makes a controlled reentry into Earth's atmosphere and lands in the Pacific Ocean. A Dragon mission to boost Hubble's altitude could add 15 or even 20 years of orbital lifetime, Crouse said. The study will also look at potential servicing options, although nothing like the detailed instrument replacements and major upgrades performed during Hubble servicing missions with NASA's space shuttle. Rather, engineers from NASA and SpaceX will assess the feasibility of replacing the gyroscopes that control the pointing of the telescope. Only three of the spacecraft's six gyroscopes remain in working order.

Stadia, Google's ill-fated attempt at a cloud gaming service, will shut down in January. Players will be refunded for all their hardware and software purchases, except for Stadia Pro subscriptions. As it turns out, some folks will be able to keep playing certain games elsewhere. Ubisoft will help people who bought its titles on Stadia to transfer their purchases to PC. From a report: "While Stadia will shut down on January 18th, 2023, we're happy to share that we're currently working to bring the games you own on Stadia to PC through Ubisoft Connect," Ubisoft senior corporate communications manager Jessica Roache told The Verge. "We'll have more to share regarding specific details as well as the impact for Ubisoft+ subscribers at a later date." Google has already shut down the Stadia store, so if you were thinking of buying an Ubisoft game, getting a refund, then gaining access to the PC version for free, you're out of luck. Ubisoft hasn't revealed when it will offer Stadia players access to their games on Ubisoft Connect. It also hasn't confirmed whether Stadians will be able to transfer their save data over to PC. That said, the Ubisoft+ subscription service includes a cloud save feature, so hopefully the company can figure out a way to maintain players' progress if they switch to a PC version.

"First they came for factory jobs. Then they showed up in service industries. Now, machines are making inroads into the kind of white-collar office work once thought to be the exclusive preserve of humans," write Alexandre Tanzi and Reade Pickert via Bloomberg. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: It's not just corporate giants, capable of spending millions of dollars to develop their own technologies, that are getting in on the act. One feature of the new automation wave is that companies like Kizen have popped up to make it affordable even for smaller firms. Based in Austin, Texas, Kizen markets an automated assistant called Zoe, which can perform tasks for sales teams like carrying out initial research and qualifying leads. Launched a year ago, it's already sold more than 400,000 licenses. "Our smallest customer pays us $10 a month and our largest customer pays us $9.5 million a year,'' says John Winner, Kizen's chief executive officer. There are plenty of other ambitious companies cashing in on the trend, and posting steep increases in revenue -- like UiPath Inc., a favorite of star investment manager Cathie Wood, as well as Appian Corp. and EngageSmart Inc. Alongside the growth of AI and what economists call "robotic process automation" -- essentially, when software performs certain tasks previously done by humans -- old-school automation is still going strong too.

The number of robots sold in North America hit a new record in the first quarter of 2022, according to the Association for Advancing Automation. The World Economic Forum predicts that by 2025, machines will be working as many hours as humans. What all of this innovation means for the world's workers is one of the key open questions in economics. The upbeat view says it's tasks that get automated, not entire jobs -- and if the mundane ones can be handled by computers or robots, that should free up employees for more challenging and satisfying work. The downside risk: occupations from sales reps to administrative support, could begin to disappear -- without leaving obvious alternatives for the people who earned a living from them. That adds another employment threat for white-collar workers who may already be vulnerable right now to an economic downturn, largely because so many got hired in the boom of the past couple of years.

KC Harvey Environmental, a consultancy based in Bozeman, Montana that works with businesses and governments on environmental issues, is one of Kizen's clients. It uses the software to automate document control -- for example, archiving and delivering new contracts to the right places and people. "A new project probably took our accounting group and project management team a day," says Rio Franzman, KC Harvey's chief operating officer. "This now probably streamlines it down to about an hour." The firm employs about 100 people and "we didn't lose any'' as a result of automation, he says. "What it did allow is for the reallocation of time and resources to more meaningful tasks." KC Harvey is now working with Kizen to bring AI into its marketing, too, with a partly automated newsletter among other projects. Some of the biggest firms at the forefront of automation also say they've been able to do it without cutting jobs.

Engineering giant Siemens AG says it's automated all kinds of production and back-office tasks at its innovative plant in Amberg, Germany, where it makes industrial computers, while keeping staffing steady at around 1,350 employees over several decades. The firm has developed a technology known as "digital twinning," which builds virtual versions of everything from specific products to administrative processes. Managers can then run simulations and stress-tests to see how things can be made better. "We're not going to automate people out of the process," says Barbara Humpton, CEO of Siemens USA. "By optimizing automation systems, and by using digital tools and AI, workers have increased productivity at Amberg by more than 1,000%." [...] Whatever the outcome, it's unlikely to allay the deep unease that the idea of automation triggers among workers who feel their jobs are vulnerable. With the rise of AI, that group increasingly includes white-collar employees.

Developer Asahi Lina with the Asahi Linux project was successfully able to get GNOME running on the Apple M1, including "Firefox with YouTube video playback, the game Neverball, various KDE applications, and more," reports Phoronix. From the report: This is some great progress especially with the driver being written in Rust -- the first within the Direct Rendering Manager subsystem -- and lots of work there with the Rust infrastructure in early form. It won't be until at least Linux 6.2 before this driver could be mainlined while we'll see how quickly it tries to go mainline before it can commit to a stable user-space interface. At the moment there is also a significant driver "hack" involved but will hopefully be sorted out soon. Over in user-space, the AGX Gallium3D driver continues being worked on for OpenGL support with hopes of having OpenGL 2.1 completed by year's end. Obviously it will be longer before seeing the Apple graphics suitable for modern gaming with Vulkan, etc but progress is being made across the board in reverse-engineered, open-source Apple Silicon support under Linux. You can watch a video of the driver working here.

NASA's Juno spacecraft has made the closest approach to Jupiter's tantalizing, icy moon Europa in more than 20 years. From a report: Juno on Thursday zipped within 222 miles (357 kilometers) of Europa, thought to have an ocean flowing beneath its thick frozen crust, raising the possibility of underwater life. Scientists hope to get lucky and observe possible water plumes shooting from the surface of Europa, close in size to Earth's moon. "We have to be at the right place at just the right time, but if we are so fortunate, it's a home run for sure," Juno's chief scientist, Scott Bolton of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, said in a statement. John Bordi, deputy mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, expected the spacecraft to go "screaming by pretty fast," with a relative velocity of almost 15 miles per second (23.6 kilometers per second). Pictures should be available by Friday, NASA said. The latest observations will help NASA plan for its Europa Clipper mission, due to launch in 2024. The European Space Agency also plans close encounters with its Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, lifting off next year.

Apple is bringing Stage Manager, a new multitasking system exclusive to iPads with the M1 chip, to a number of older devices. Engadget reports: Probably the biggest change Apple announced with iPadOS 16 earlier this year is Stage Manager, a totally new multitasking system that adds overlapping, resizable windows to the iPad. That feature also works on an external display, the first time that iPads could do anything besides mirror their screen on a monitor. Unfortunately, the feature was limited to iPads with the M1 chip -- that includes the 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pro released in May of 2021 as well as the M1-powered iPad Air which Apple released earlier this year. All other older iPads were left out.

That changes with the latest iPadOS 16 developer beta, which was just released. Now, Apple is making Stage Manager work with a number of older devices: it'll work on the 11-inch iPad Pro (first generation and later) and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (third generation and later). Specifically, it'll be available on the 2018 and 2020 models that use the A12X and A12Z chips rather than just the M1. However, there is one notable missing feature for the older iPad Pro models -- Stage Manager will only work on the iPad's build-in display. You won't be able to extend your display to an external monitor. Apple also says that developer beta 5 of iPadOS 16. is removing external display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads, something that has been present since the first iPadOS 16 beta was released a few months ago. It'll be re-introduced in a software update coming later this year.

Robinhood is finally rolling out a beta version of its non-custodial crypto wallet to 10,000 customers on its waitlist after announcing the product in May, its CTO and general manager of crypto, Johann Kerbrat, told TechCrunch. The product is called Robinhood Wallet and will be the company's first internationally-available app, Kerbrat said. From a report: The company revealed new details about the offering in conjunction with the beta launch, most notably that it will launch exclusively with Polygon, a popular layer-two blockchain that plugs into Ethereum and makes the network faster and cheaper to use. This means beta users will be able to purchase the Polygon MATIC token on Robinhood's main exchange app and transfer it to their Robinhood Wallet. They will also be able to access dApps directly on the Polygon network, including DeFi apps such as Uniswap, Balancer and Kyberswap, and metaverse games such as Decentraland, a spokesperson for Polygon said in an email to TechCrunch. Over time, the Robinhood team plans to build out multi-chain support for the wallet beyond the Polygon ecosystem, Robinhood crypto product manager Seong Seog Lee told TechCrunch.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Ukrainian government on Monday warned that the Kremlin is planning to carry out "massive cyberattacks" targeting power grids and other critical infrastructure in Ukraine and in the territories of its allies. "By the cyberattacks, the enemy will try to increase the effect of missile strikes on electricity supply facilities, primarily in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine," an advisory warned. "The occupying command is convinced that this will slow down the offensive operations of the Ukrainian Defence Forces."

Monday's advisory alluded to two cyberattacks the Russian government carried out -- first in 2015 and then almost exactly one year later -- that deliberately left Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest months of the year. The attacks were seen as a proof-of-concept and test ground of sorts for disrupting Ukraine's power supply. "The experience of cyberattacks on Ukraine's energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be used when conducting operations," the Ukrainian government said on Monday.

It's hard to assess the chances of a successful hacking campaign against Ukraine's power grids. Earlier this year, Ukraine's CERT-UA said it successfully detected a new strain of Industroyer inside the network of a regional Ukrainian energy firm. Industroyer2 reportedly was able to temporarily switch off power to nine electrical substations but was stopped before a major blackout could be triggered. [...] But researchers from Mandiant and elsewhere also note that Sandworm, the name for the Kremlin-backed group behind the power grid hacks, is among the most elite hacking groups in the world. They are known for stealth, persistence, and remaining hidden inside targeted organizations for months or even years before surfacing. Besides an attack on electrical grids, Monday's advisory also warned of other forms of disruptions the country expected Russia to ramp up. "The Kremlin also intends to increase the intensity of DDoS attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine's closest allies, primarily Poland and the Baltic states," the advisory stated. "We don't have any direct knowledge or data to make an assessment on Ukraine's capability to defend its grid, but we do know that CERT-UA stopped the deployment of INDUSTROYER.V2 malware that targeted Ukraine's electric substations earlier this year," Chris Sistrunk, technical manager of Mandiant Industrial Control Systems Consulting, wrote in an email. "Based on that, and what we know about the Ukrainian people's overall resolve, it's increasingly clear that one of the reasons cyberattacks in Ukraine have been dampened is because its defenders are very aggressive and very good at confronting Russian actors."

The military's innovation office is launching a sweeping review of cryptocurrencies to assess threats to national security and law enforcement posed by the rise of digital assets, the Washington Post reported Friday. From the report: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- better known as DARPA, the office that developed the earliest technology undergirding the internet -- has hired crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital to conduct the year-long project. The company will develop tools that give the Pentagon a granular view of crypto markets' inner workings, in part to help authorities crack down on illicit uses of digital assets. "The program underway here involves mapping out the cryptocurrency universe in some detail," Mark Flood, a program manager with the agency, said in an interview with The Washington Post. Beyond fighting illicit finance, the office aims to use the data for insights into dynamics shaping traditional financial markets, where detailed information is harder to gather. The deal is the latest evidence that federal agencies are ramping up efforts to thwart rogue regimes, terrorists and other criminal actors using crypto to fund their operations.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Protocol: Google is gunning for Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision: The company is looking to introduce two new media formats to offer HDR video and 3D audio under a new consumer-recognizable brand without the licensing fees hardware manufacturers currently have to pay Dolby. Google shared plans for the media formats, which are internally known as Project Caviar, at a closed-door event with hardware manufacturers earlier this year. In a video of the presentation that was leaked to Protocol, group product manager Roshan Baliga describes the goal of the project as building "a healthier, broader ecosystem" for premium media experiences. The company's primary focus for Project Caviar is YouTube, which does not currently support Dolby Atmos or Dolby Vision. However, Google also aims to bring other industry players on board, including device manufacturers and service providers. This makes Project Caviar one of Google's most ambitious pushes for open media formats since the company began working on royalty-free video codecs over a decade ago.

Google's open media efforts have until now primarily focused on the development of codecs. The company acquired video codec maker On2 in 2009 to open source some of its technology; it has also played a significant role in the foundation of the Alliance for Open Media, an industry consortium that is overseeing the royalty-free AV1 video codec. Project Caviar is different from those efforts in that it is not another codec. Instead, the project focuses on 3D audio and HDR video formats that make use of existing codecs but allow for more rich and immersive media playback experiences, much like Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision do. Baliga didn't mention Dolby by name during his presentation, but he still made it abundantly clear that the company was looking to establish alternatives to the Atmos and Vision formats. "We realized that there are premium media experiences where there aren't any great royalty-free solutions," he said, adding that the licensing costs for premium HDR video and 3D audio "can hurt manufacturers and consumers."

Dolby makes most of its money through licensing fees from hardware manufacturers. The company charges TV manufacturers $2 to $3 to license Dolby Vision, according to its Cloud Media Solutions SVP Giles Baker. Dolby hasn't publicly disclosed licensing fees for Atmos; it charges consumers who want to add immersive audio to their Xbox consoles $15 per license, but the fee hardware manufacturers have to pay is said to be significantly lower. Still, in an industry that long has struggled with razor-thin margins, every extra dollar matters. That's especially true because Dolby already charges virtually all device makers a licensing fee for its legacy audio codecs. A manufacturer of streaming boxes that wholesale for $50 has to pay around $2 per unit for Dolby Vision and Dolby Digital, according to a document an industry insider shared with Protocol. "For lower-cost living room devices, the cost may be prohibitive," Baliga said during his presentation.

Apple has responded to user complaints regarding an annoying pop-up in iOS 16 that asks for user permission if an app wants to access the clipboard to paste text, images, and more. From a report: The new prompt was added to iOS 16 as a privacy measure for users, requiring that apps ask for permission to access the clipboard, which may have sensitive data. The prompt, however, has become an annoyance for users as they install iOS 16, as it constantly asks for permission whenever they wish to paste something into an app. As user annoyance with the behavior boils high, Apple has finally responded, saying the constant pop-up is not how the feature is intended to work. MacRumors reader Kieran sent an email to Craig Federighi and Tim Cook, complaining about the constant prompt and advocating for Apple to treat access to the clipboard the same way iOS treats third-party access to location, camera, microphone, and more. Ron Huang, a senior manager at Apple, joined the email thread saying the pop-up is not supposed to appear every time a user attempts to paste. "This is absolutely not expected behavior, and we will get to the bottom of it," Huang said. Huang added that this behavior is not something Apple has seen internally but that Kieran is "not the only one" experiencing it. Responding to the suggestion that clipboard access should be added within the Settings app on a per-app basis, Huang said it would make a "good improvement" and added that Apple "certainly need to fix and make apps like Mail just work even without this setting, but it's nonetheless helpful for apps which users want to share data with even if they didn't initiate it." "Stay tuned," he added.

Intel is replacing its Pentium and Celeron brands with just Intel Processor. The new branding will replace both existing brands in 2023 notebooks and supposedly make things easier when consumers are looking to purchase budget laptops. From a report: Intel will now focus on its Core, Evo, and vPro brands for its flagship products and use Intel Processor in what it calls "essential" products. "Intel is committed to driving innovation to benefit users, and our entry-level processor families have been crucial for raising the PC standard across all price points," explains Josh Newman, VP and interim general manager of mobile client platforms at Intel. "The new Intel Processor branding will simplify our offerings so users can focus on choosing the right processor for their needs."

The end of the Pentium brand comes after nearly 30 years of use. Originally introduced in 1993, flagship Pentium chips were first introduced in high-end desktop machines before making the move to laptops. Intel has largely been using its Core branding for its flagship line of processors ever since its introduction in 2006, and Intel repurposed the Pentium branding for midrange processors instead. Celeron was Intel's brand name for low-cost PCs. Launched around five years after Pentium, Celeron chips have always offered a lot less performance at a lot less cost for laptop makers and, ultimately, consumers. The first Celeron chip in 1998 was based on a Pentium II processor, and the latest Celeron processors are largely used in Chromebooks and low-cost laptops.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BleepingComputer: Microsoft released a new Windows Terminal version today that adds a long-awaited feature, making it possible to create and use custom themes. For now, users can only create themes by editing the Windows Terminal global JSON settings file to alter the background color of tabs and tab rows and choose between light and dark terminal window themes. After adding a new theme config to the JSON file, it will automatically appear in the app's Settings > Appearance settings page.

"themes is a global property that can contain a variety of themes objects, which will appear in the Theme dropdown on the Appearance page of the settings UI," Windows Terminal Program Manager Kayla Cinnamon explained. "Themes are only editable using the JSON file, but they will appear in the Theme dropdown in the settings UI." To add your own custom themes, you will have to install the app's latest version, Windows Terminal Preview 1.16. The new version also adds updated default colors and sets the dark theme as the default theme instead of following the default Windows system theme. "We have modified some of the default colors in Windows Terminal for a more cohesive appearance. Additionally, we are defaulting Terminal to use dark theme, rather than following the system theme," Cinnamon added.

Nintendo announced the title for the next highly anticipated game in one of its bestselling franchises -- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It will be available May 12. From a report: The Zelda series, originally created by Nintendo former general manager Shigeru Miyamoto, has long been iconic among gaming fans worldwide and in the US, the Japanese company's largest market. The last title in the series, Breath of the Wild, was released in tandem with the Switch's debut in March 2017. The game helped drive the gadget's launch sales and so far has sold more than 27 million copies. Earlier this year Nintendo delayed the release of the next installment in the Zelda series to 2023, sending its shares tumbling. The news was the highlight of a 45-minute video presentation to tease Nintendo's upcoming titles this fall and into next year. Other announcements included Fire Emblem: Engage, Octopath Traveler 2 and Pikmin 4, which will be released in 2023. The Super Mario Bros. movie, starring Chris Pratt as the voice of the iconic Italian plumber, will be coming in the Spring, Miyamoto announced.

"Succession," HBO's portrait of a dysfunctional media dynasty, won best drama at the 74th Emmy Awards on Monday night, the second time the series has taken the prize. The New York Times: Jesse Armstrong, the show's creator, also took home the Emmy for best writing, the third time he's won in that category. And Matthew Macfadyen won best supporting actor in a drama for the first time for his performance on the show. It was the sixth time in eight years that HBO has taken the television industry's biggest prize for a recurring series, making it yet another triumphant night for the cable network. HBO, as well as its streaming service, HBO Max, won more Emmys (38) than any other outlet, besting its chief rival, Netflix (26).

"The White Lotus," the cable network's beloved upstairs-downstairs dramedy that took place at a Hawaiian resort, won best limited series, and tore through several other categories. The show won 10 Emmys altogether, more than any other series. Mike White, the show's creator and director, won a pair of Emmys for best directing and writing. And performers from the show, Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge, both received acting Emmys. "Mike White, my God, thank you for giving me one of the best experiences of my life," Bartlett, who played an off-the-wagon hotel manager, said from the Emmys stage. But HBO's chronicles of the rich were not the only winners on Monday night.

"Ted Lasso," the Apple TV+ sports series, won best comedy for a second consecutive year, as the tech giant continues on an awards show tear. Apple TV+, which had its debut in November 2019, won best picture at the Oscars ("CODA") earlier this year. And Jason Sudeikis repeated as best actor in a comedy as the fish-out-of-water soccer coach in "Ted Lasso." There were other big moments in the comedy awards. Quinta Brunson, the creator of the good-natured ABC workplace sitcom, "Abbott Elementary," about a group of elementary schoolteachers at an underfunded Philadelphia public school, won for best writing in a comedy. It was only the second time a Black woman won the award (Lena Waithe was the first, in 2017, for "Master of None").