An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: Google created Flutter a number of years ago, with the aim to make a cross-platform software framework. Flutter's biggest strength is that it can be used to build applications for Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, macOS, and even the web, and all from the same shared codebase. While building apps for Windows received stable support back in February, both macOS and Linux were still only in beta. Now that's changing, as Google has announced Flutter 3 at this year's Google I/O, complete with stable support for building apps for macOS and Linux.

Of course, cross-platform support for both of these new platforms requires more than just programs being able to run. They need to fit in with the rest of the experience, and they need to support specific features that may be unique, as well. That's why Google is highlighting two things: the first is that Linux support helped by Canonical (the publisher of Ubuntu) and Google collaborating in order to "offer a highly-integrated, best-of-breed option for development."

As Google puts it, Canonical is already developing with "Flutter for key shell experiences including installation and firmware updates." What's more, their Linux-specific packages "provide an idiomatic API for core operating system services including dbus, gsettings, networkmanager, Bluetooth and desktop notifications, as well as a comprehensive theme and widget set for Yaru, the Ubuntu look and feel." As for macOS, Google invested in supporting both Intel and Apple Silicon devices, with Universal Binary support that allows apps to package executables that run natively on both architectures. Tim Sneath, Director of Product and UX for Flutter & Dart, highlights all the new improvements in a Medium post.

Today at the Open Source Software Security Summit II in Washington, D.C., OpenSSF announced an ambitious, multipronged plan with 10 key goals to better secure the entire open-source software ecosystem. From a report: While open-source software itself can sometimes be freely available, securing it will have a price. OpenSSF has estimated that its plan will require $147.9 million in funding over a two-year period. In a press conference held after the summit, Brian Behlendorf, general manager of OpenSSF, said that $30 million has already been pledged by OpenSSF members including Amazon, Intel, VMware, Ericsson, Google and Microsoft.

Facebook-owner Meta Platforms is preparing cutbacks in its Reality Labs division, a unit at the center of the company's strategy to refocus on hardware products and the "metaverse," a spokesperson confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday. From a report: Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth told Reality Labs staffers during a weekly Q&A session on Tuesday to expect the changes to be announced within a week, according to a summary of his comments viewed by Reuters. The Meta spokesperson confirmed that Bosworth told staffers the division could not afford to do some projects anymore and would have to postpone others, without specifying which projects would be affected. She said Meta was not planning layoffs as part of the changes.

An anonymous reader shares a report: If you've ever looked at a 360 Hz monitor and thought, "This isn't fast enough," here's something to look forward to. While we've seen monitor prototypes surpass 360 Hz, the highest native refresh rate you'll find on a PC display these days, it seems that AU Optronics (AUO) is working on panels that'll be available with an even snappier 480 Hz refresh rate. Of course, not many would look at a screen updating with new information 360 times every second as lagging. But for very fast-paced action -- like in a competitive game where words and items whizz by in an instant or where a few milliseconds of a delay could be the difference between a win or a loss -- more speed may be imperative.

Crypto investors in Germany won't pay tax on sales of digital assets such as bitcoin and ether -- as long as they're held for more than one year. From a report: Germany's Federal Ministry of Finance shared the ruling in a 24-page document, which formally defined blockchain concepts such as mining, staking, airdrops and masternodes within the context of the country's tax system. The decree marks the first time Germany has issued nationwide tax guidance on cryptocurrency. It was crafted in close consultation with the country's 16 federal states, as well as top financial institutions. Government ministers had held a hearing last summer to gauge sentiment among local crypto associations such as Bitkom and other market participants -- including individual investors. One of the most pressing questions related to whether lending or staking cryptocurrency extends the tax-free period on digital asset sales to 10 years, as is the case with buy-to-let properties.

EU countries and lawmakers agreed on Friday to tougher cybersecurity rules for large energy, transport and financial firms, digital providers and medical device makers amid concerns about cyber attacks by state actors and other malicious players. From a report: The European Commission two years ago proposed rules on the cybersecurity of network and information systems called NIS 2 Directive, in effect expanding the scope of the current rule known as NIS Directive.

The new rules cover all medium and large companies in essential sectors - energy, transport, banking, financial market infrastructure, health, vaccines and medical devices, drinking water, waste water, digital infrastructure, public administration and space. All medium and large firms in postal and courier services, waste management, chemicals, food manufacturing, medical devices, computers and electronics, machinery equipment, motor vehicles, and digital providers such as online market places, online search engines, and social networking service platforms will also fall under the rules.

Alphabet's Google dodged court sanctions after it was called out by the Justice Department for hiding documents from government lawyers. From a report: U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said during a hearing Thursday that he wouldn't punish the company over its practice of having employees copy company lawyers on emails when discussing competition issues. The US government claims Google uses "silent attorney" emails as a ploy to avoid disclosing records in litigation. But Mehta ordered Google to ensure that all of the "silent-attorney" emails are reviewed anew to make sure the company has complied with disclosure obligations.

The US justice department secretly issued a subpoena to gain access to details of the phone account of a Guardian reporter as part of an aggressive leak investigation into media stories about an official inquiry into the Trump administration's child separation policy at the southern border. From a report: Leak investigators issued the subpoena to obtain the phone number of Stephanie Kirchgaessner, the Guardian's investigations correspondent in Washington. The move was carried out without notifying the newspaper or its reporter, as part of an attempt to ferret out the source of media articles about a review into family separation conducted by the Department of Justice's inspector general, Michael Horowitz. It is highly unusual for US government officials to obtain a journalist's phone details in this way, especially when no national security or classified information is involved. The move was all the more surprising in that it came from the DoJ's inspector general's office -- the watchdog responsible for ethical oversight and whistleblower protections. Katharine Viner, the Guardian's editor-in-chief, decried the action as "an egregious example of infringement on press freedom and public interest journalism by the US Department of Justice."

At Google I/O, the company said their Android Auto car interface app is now "built to adapt to any screen size." Ars Technica reports: Google says "there are three main functionalities that drivers prioritize in their cars: navigation, media and communication," and the new Android Auto design puts each of those interfaces in its own panel. Maps gets the biggest, main panel, media and communication panels get stacked next to each other, and there's a combo status/navigation bar. To accommodate the million different screen sizes, these items can be arranged in whatever orientation works best in the car.

One example, close to the current Android Auto configuration, shows the combo bar oriented vertically against the side of the screen, followed by a vertical stack of the message and media panels, then a big Google Maps panel. Another example of a more vertical screen design shows a big Google Maps panel on top of the message and media panels, with the combo bar on the bottom. Things can be arranged to fit. The new interface will be out "this summer."

Robert Triggs, writing for AndroidAuthority: In 2022, there's now a multifaceted argument in favor of a new approach to smartphone manufacturing. One which focuses on long-term support for both hardware and software. Core to this line of thinking is that smartphone hardware has hit a plateau. From the mid-range to flagships, hardware is now more than powerful enough to last several years without going obsolete. The days of rampant year-on-year improvements are long gone, whether you're looking at bleeding-edge performance, cameras, or battery life. This isn't to say we don't yearn for those yearly gains, but they no longer suddenly mark older models for obsolescence even if they materialize. As such, modern smartphones deserve long-term software support above and beyond semi-annual security patches.

Not to mention the increasingly compelling sustainability and right-to-repair arguments regarding raw materials and e-waste. It's increasingly hard to justify the production of throwaway electronics built to last just a handful of years. Simultaneously, sky-high prices and a squeeze in the cost of living have cast new light on the need for easier access to repair programs and spare parts. Not forgetting the popularity of refurbished handsets. Long-term support doesn't have to be an unprofitable venture for smartphone manufacturers either. Official repair channels bring in revenue over time, and it's possible to factor long-term support into the retail price of a handset. Then there's the whole avenue of hardware-as-a-service to explore.

The F.B.I. informed the Israeli government in a 2018 letter that it had purchased Pegasus, the notorious hacking tool, to collect data from mobile phones to aid ongoing investigations, the clearest documentary evidence to date that the bureau weighed using the spyware as a tool of law enforcement. The New York Times reports: The F.B.I.'s description of its intended use of Pegasus came in a letter from a top F.B.I. official to Israel's Ministry of Defense that was reviewed by The New York Times. Pegasus is produced by an Israeli firm, NSO Group, which needs to gain approval from the Israeli government before it can sell the hacking tool to a foreign government. The 2018 letter, written by an official in the F.B.I.'s operational technology division, stated that the bureau intended to use Pegasus "for the collection of data from mobile devices for the prevention and investigation of crimes and terrorism, in compliance with privacy and national security laws."

The Times revealed in January that the F.B.I. had purchased Pegasus in 2018 and, over the next two years, tested the spyware at a secret facility in New Jersey. Since the article's publication, F.B.I. officials have acknowledged that they considered deploying Pegasus but have emphasized that the bureau bought the spying tool mainly to test and evaluate it -- partly to assess how adversaries might use it. They said the bureau never used the spyware in any operation.

Oil giant Saudi Aramco on Wednesday surpassed Apple as the world's most valuable firm. CNBC reports: Aramco's market valuation was just under $2.43 trillion on Wednesday, according to FactSet, which converted its market cap to dollars. Apple, which fell more than 5% during trading in the U.S. on Wednesday, is now worth $2.37 trillion. Energy stocks and prices have been rising as investors sell off equities in several industries, including technology, on fears of a deteriorating economic environment. Apple has fallen nearly 20% since its $182.94 peak on Jan. 4. The move is mostly symbolic, but it shows how markets are shifting as the global economy grapples with rising interest rates, inflation, and supply chain problems.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The anonymous message board app Yik Yak is designed in a way that it is possible to get the precise location of a user's post, and see users' unique IDs, potentially allowing someone to dox and stalk users, according to a researcher. Yik Yak is an anonymous social media network popular primarily on college campuses. It was launched in 2013. The app shut down completely in 2017, after it was accused of being a platform used to harass and cyberbully students, and even to post bomb threats. These allegations have followed the app since its very beginning. In 2014, the company blocked access to middle school and high school students because of reports of threats of violence and bullying. The app came back last year, a comeback no one was really asking for, as my colleague Gita Jackson pointed out at the time. Yik Yak does have so-called "community guardrails" to "to ensure everyone feels welcomed and stays safe." But students are still reporting the same old problems.

In April, David Teather, a computer science student, analyzed what kind of data Yik Yak exposes by intercepting data sent and received by his Yik Yak app using a free and open source tool called mitmproxy and by writing "code that pretended to be the Yik Yak app to extract information from it." By doing that, he realized that Yik Yak sent the precise GPS coordinates of every post to his app, as well as a user's unique ID -- nrCi213RA3SncY6mVLZzuGUIJ2T2 for example -- which could have allowed him to track users' posts by looking at where they posted over time, opening up the possibility to de-anonymize and stalk users, according to a blog post he published this week. Teather demonstrated the flaw in a video call to Motherboard, showing a post in his area, and its GPS coordinates.

After Teather alerted Yik Yak of this flaw on April 11, the company made some changes and pushed out new versions of the app on April 28, May 9, and May 10. Teather told Yik Yak that he was planning to publish his research on May 9, according to email correspondence that he shared with Motherboard. After Yik Yak pushed the new updated apps, the privacy issues are only partially fixed, according to Teather. Teather said that as of today, on the app's latest version, Yik Yak does not expose GPS locations, and the app doesn't display a user's unique ID when intercepting data the same way he did in April. But, Teather told Motherboard that he is still able to recover both coordinates and user ID by analyzing the app's API from previous app versions. What's worse, the app now shows the distance, in feet, between a user and other users' posts, according to Teather and Zach Edwards, an independent privacy researcher who analyzed the Yik Yak app for Motherboard. "Since the distance is in feet though it should be still possible to triangulate a particular user/post by changing your location until you can figure that out," Teather told Motherboard.

Edwards added: "you can still probably dox someone by merely spoofing your own location and recording the number of feet from the person posting."

Tony Fadell, Apple's iPod creator and Nest co-founder, warns the metaverse risks creating more trolls and damaging human interaction. The BBC reports: The virtual reality-based metaverse removes the ability "to look into the other person's face," Tony Fadell said. "If you put technology between that human connection that's when the toxicity happens," he said. [...] While Mr Fadell said the technology behind the metaverse has merit: "When you're trying to make social interaction and social connection, when you can't look into the other person's face, you can't see their eyes you don't have real humanistic ways of connecting. It become disintermediated and you have the ability at that point to create more trolls, people who hide behind things and then use that to their advantage to get attention." He added: "We need to regain control of that human connection, we don't need more technology between us."

He said told The Verge that people should not be living through "small, glowing rectangles" such as their phones. "A lot of the meetings that we have today, you're looking at a grid of faces on a screen. That's not how we process things either." However, the metaverse has also prompted criticism and concerns over safety due to the ability of people to create and hide behind avatars. Mr Fadell said: "We had the same problem with text-based commenting and with blogs, we've had it with videos now we're going to have it in metaverse."

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is introducing legislation that would strip the Walt Disney Company of special copyright protections granted to the corporation by Congress, while also limiting the length of new copyrights. From a report: The "Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022" would cap the length of copyrights given corporations by Congress to 56 years and retroactively implement this change on companies, including Walt Disney. "The age of Republican handouts to Big Business is over. Thanks to special copyright protections from Congress, woke corporations like Disney have earned billions while increasingly pandering to woke activists. It's time to take away Disney's special privileges and open up a new era of creativity and innovation," Hawley told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement. According to Hawley's office, Congress has used an old law, also known as the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act," in order to extend copyrights to corporations for up to 120 years. Instead of issuing copyright protections to create enough monopoly protection in order to foster innovation, companies are getting handouts from Congress for a much longer period than needed.

Terraform Labs restarted the Terra blockchain following a software update to help avoid attacks against the network in the wake of the collapse of its algorithmic stablecoin and the related Luna token that had roiled cryptocurrency markets. From a report: The fix is designed to help avoid so-called governance attacks against its protocol -- a way of manipulating the fundamentals of a given blockchain by acquiring enough tokens to force a majority vote. Following the patch's release, Terra said earlier that the network would go live again once two-thirds of the voting power belonging to validators came online to finalize the update. In previous outages for blockchain networks like Solana, this process has taken several hours to complete as validators can reside across multiple time zones.

For $800 a month you could live in a tiny bunk bed-style pod with 13 other roommates in the Bay Area. From a report: Eight-month-old startup Brownstone Shared Housing has come under the spotlight this week after an Insider profile on the company revealed what it looks like inside the Palo Alto home with 14 tenants each living in a "pod." While the $800-a-month rent may seem steep for a stacked bunk bed pod, the average rental rate for a studio apartment near Stanford University, where the pod-home sits, is currently around $2,400. Co-founder Christina Lennox has lived in a pod herself for the past year. "The wood kind of allows for relaxation, rather than like going inside of this futuristic-looking plastic object," Lennox told Insider. "It has, like, definitely a different feel -- I would say that it's more calming and soothing for people."

Twitter is shaking up its top leadership. The first move came as consumer product leader Kayvon Beykpour announced on Twitter that current CEO Parag Agrawal "asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction." From a report: Bruce Falck, the general manager of revenue and head of product for its business side, confirmed in a (now deleted) tweet that he was also fired by Agrawal. Now Jay Sullivan, who we spoke to in March about Twitter's plans to add 100 million daily users, will take over as both the head of product and interim head of revenue. These moves are occurring at the same time Elon Musk moves forward with his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, although he hasn't taken ownership of the company yet. In a memo to employees obtained by The Verge, Agrawal wrote, "At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the decision was made to invest aggressively to deliver big growth in audience and revenue, and as a company we did not hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence in these goals."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google today announced the launch of AlloyDB, a new fully-managed PostgreSQL-compatible database service that the company claims to be twice as fast for transactional workloads as AWS's comparable Aurora PostgreSQL (and four times faster than standard PostgreSQL for the same workloads and up to 100 times faster for analytical queries). [...] AlloyDB is the standard PostgreSQL database at its core, though the team did modify the kernel to allow it to use Google's infrastructure to its fullest, all while allowing the team to stay up to date with new versions as they launch.

Andi Gutmans, who joined Google as its GM and VP of Engineering for its database products in 2020 after a long stint at AWS, told me that one of the reasons the company is launching this new product is that while Google has done well in helping enterprise customers move their MySQL and PostgreSQL servers to the cloud with the help of services like CloudSQL, the company didn't necessarily have the right offerings for those customers who wanted to move their legacy databases (Gutmans didn't explicitly say so, but I think you can safely insert 'Oracle' here) to an open-source service.

"There are different reasons for that," he told me. "First, they are actually using more than one cloud provider, so they want to have the flexibility to run everywhere. There are a lot of unfriendly licensing gimmicks, traditionally. Customers really, really hate that and, I would say, whereas probably two to three years ago, customers were just complaining about it, what I notice now is customers are really willing to invest resources to just get off these legacy databases. They are sick of being strapped and locked in." Add to that Postgres' rise to becoming somewhat of a de facto standard for relational open-source databases (and MySQL's decline) and it becomes clear why Google decided that it wanted to be able to offer a dedicated high-performance PostgreSQL service. The report also says Google spent a lot of effort on making Postgres perform better for customers that want to use their relational database for analytics use cases.

"The changes the team made to the Postgres kernel, for example, now allow it to scale the system linearly to over 64 virtual cores while on the analytical side, the team built a custom machine learning-based caching service to learn a customer's access patterns and then convert Postgres' row format into an in-memory columnar format that can be analyzed significantly faster."

A three-person panel of federal appeals court judges is letting a Texas law aimed at punishing social media companies for alleged anti-conservative bias go into effect for now. From a report: In a ruling late Wednesday, the panel stayed a district court injunction that had paused the law while the judges consider an appeal of the lower court's move. The decision, which was supported by two unnamed judges and was not immediately published with the court's reasoning, comes after a Monday hearing in which the jurists appeared to struggle with basic tech concepts, including whether Twitter counts as a website.

The decision is a win for conservative critics of the current interpretation of tech law, which underlies the operations of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Two tech trade groups that count the Big Tech companies as members had sued Texas over the law. Until this week, industry observers widely expected the court to uphold a block on the law, which allows for lawsuits against social media services if they "censor" users. A different federal court also paused a similar Florida law, finding that it sought to punish private companies for their views and treatment of content in violation of the First Amendment. In court, Texas argued that it is merely trying to force platforms to carry all content the way phone companies are expected to carry all calls.