A week after their broken-down negotiations spilled into the public, Google and Roku still haven't been able to reach a deal to renew YouTube TV's presence on the huge streaming platform. But Google has come up with a workaround in the meantime: it's going to let people access YouTube TV directly from the main YouTube app. From a report: YouTube users will start seeing a "Go to YouTube TV" option in the main YouTube app over the next few days. When they select that, they'll then be switched over to the standard YouTube TV user experience. This option is coming to Roku devices first -- where it's currently most needed -- but will also come to YouTube on other platforms as well. [...] Google also said today that it's "in ongoing, long-term conversations with Roku to certify that new devices meet our technical requirements," yet more confirmation that the company is insisting hardware makers implement support for AV1 decoding

In late 2019, Microsoft announced Windows 10X, a new flavor of Windows 10 designed for dual-screen PCs. Windows 10X, Microsoft said at the time, will power dual-screen PCs from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and of course Microsoft. But it appears Microsoft has changed its plans about what it wants to do with this version of Windows 10. Microsoft-focused news outlet Petri reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Microsoft will not be shipping Windows 10X this year and the OS, as was described by the company in 2019, will likely never arrive. From the report: The company has shifted resources to Windows 10 and 10X is on the back burner, for now. For about a decade, Microsoft has been trying to modernize Windows in various ways. We have seen Windows RT, Windows 10S, and now Windows 10X. The question becomes if there really is a future for anything other than traditional Windows 10? Microsoft said during their last earnings call that there were 1.3 billion active devices are running the OS each month and with that context in mind, does there really need to be a 'lite' version of the OS?

It's a fair question at this point because Microsoft's history of trying to overhaul Windows is a journey down a road with many headstones along the way to 2021. The reality is that if Microsoft is going to invest heavily in a modern version of Windows 10, it should be to run Windows 10 on ARM. A watered-down version of the OS to compete against Chromebooks is not working out today, much like it has not worked out in the past and it may never work out either but the future is hard to predict. While Windows 10 was put in the backseat for the past couple of years and many looked at 10X as a possible revival of excitement for the OS, all eyes should now be focused on Sun Valley -- the next major update to Windows 10. If something is going to return the limelight to Windows, it has to be Sun Valley because that's the only thing left. But just because 10X isn't coming to market anytime soon, the technologies that were built for 10X are migrating to Windows 10. Not everything from 10X will show up in 10 but I would expect to see things like UI updates, app containers, and more arrive in Windows 10.

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's safe to say WhatsApp didn't have the ideal start to 2021. Less than a week into the new year, the Facebook-owned instant messaging app had already annoyed hundreds of thousands of users with its scary worded notification about a planned policy update. The backlash grew fast and millions of people, including several high-profile figures, started to explore rival apps Signal and Telegram.

Even governments, including India's -- WhatsApp's biggest market by users -- expressed concerns. (In the case of India, also an antitrust probe.) The backlash prompted WhatsApp to offer a series of clarifications and assurances to users, and it also postponed the deadline for enforcing the planned update by three months. Now with the May 15 deadline just a week away, we are able to quantify the real-world impact the aforementioned backlash had on WhatsApp's user base: Nada. The vast majority of users that WhatsApp has notified about the planned update in recent months have accepted the update, a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch. And the app continues to grow, added the spokesperson without sharing the exact figures.

schwit1 writes: Are there aliens out there? Breakthrough Listen, a privately-funded project searching for evidence of alien life, has released the first results from its survey of 60 million stars in an area looking towards the galactic center, noting that it found no evidence of any technological transmissions signaling an alien civilization from any of those stars. The kind of signals they were looking for were not beacons sent out intentionally by alien civilizations, such as television or radio broadcasts, but unintentional transmissions, such as radar transmissions meant for other purposes but still beamed into space. They found none. The paper can be downloaded here (PDF).

schwit1 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum, written by Evan Ackerman: A few weeks ago, the CTO of Cruise tweeted an example of one of their AVs demonstrating a safety behavior where it moves over to make room for a cyclist. What's interesting about this behavior, though, is that the AV does this for cyclists approaching rapidly from behind the vehicle, something a human is far less likely to notice, much less react to. A neat trick -- but what does it mean, and what's next? In the video [here], as the cyclist approaches from the rear right side at a pretty good clip, you can see the autonomous vehicle pull to the left a little bit, increasing the amount of space that the cyclist can use to pass on the right.

One important question that we're not really going to tackle here is whether this is even a good idea in the first place, since (as a cyclist) I'd personally prefer that cars be predictable rather than sometimes doing weirdly nice things that I might not be prepared for. But that's one of the things that makes cyclists tricky: we're unpredictable. And for AVs, dealing with unpredictable things is notoriously problematic. Cruise's approach to this, explains Rashed Haq, VP of Robotics at Cruise, is to try to give their autonomous system some idea of how unpredictable cyclists can be, and then plan its actions accordingly. Cruise has collected millions of miles of real-world data from its sensorized vehicles that include cyclists doing all sorts of things. And their system has built up a model of how certain it can be that when it sees a cyclist, it can accurately predict what that cyclist is going to do next.

Essentially, based on its understanding of the unpredictability of cyclists, the Cruise AV determined that the probability of a safe interaction is improved when it gives cyclists more space, so that's what it tries to do whenever possible. This behavior illustrates some of the critical differences between autonomous and human-driven vehicles. Humans drive around with relatively limited situational awareness and deal with things like uncertainty primarily on a subconscious level. AVs, on the other hand, are constantly predicting the future in very explicit ways. Humans tend to have the edge when something unusual happens, because we're able to instantly apply a lifetime's worth of common-sense knowledge about the world to our decision-making process. Meanwhile, AVs are always considering the safest next course of action across the entire space that they're able to predict.

Microsoft is now planning to refresh the Windows 95-era icons you still sometimes come across in Windows 10. The Verge reports: Windows Latest has spotted new icons for the hibernation mode, networking, memory, floppy drives, and much more as part of the shell32.dll file in preview versions of Windows 10. This DLL is a key part of the Windows Shell, which surfaces icons in a variety of dialog boxes throughout the operating system. It's also a big reason why Windows icons have been so inconsistent throughout the years. Microsoft has often modernized other parts of the OS only for an older app to throw you into a dialog box with Windows 95-era icons from shell32.dll. Hopefully this also means Windows will never ask you for a floppy disk drive when you dig into Device Manager to update a driver. That era of Windows, along with these old icons, has been well and truly over for more than a decade now. These new changes are part of Microsoft's design overhaul to Windows 10, codenamed Sun Valley. "We're expecting to hear more about Sun Valley at Microsoft's Build conference later this month, or as part of a dedicated Windows news event," notes The Verge.

Starting next year, apps on Google Play will show details about what data they collect, as well as other information about their privacy and security practices, in a new safety section in their listing. From a report: The announcement comes just a few months after Apple started displaying similar privacy information in the App Store. In the same way Apple's policy covers both its own apps and those developed by third parties, Google says its first-party apps will also be required to provide this information. According to Google, the initiative is meant to "help people understand the data an app collects or shares, if that data is secured, and additional details that impact privacy and security." The section will detail what user data an app has access to (like location, contacts, or personal info like an email address), but Google says it also wants to let developers give context to explain how it's used and what it means for their apps' functionality.

In particular, Google says apps will give information about whether data is encrypted, whether they comply with Google's policies around apps aimed at children, and whether users can opt out of data sharing. Google says the information will also highlight whether a third party has verified the app's safety section, and whether users can request that their data be deleted. The new policy won't come into effect for several months, and Google says this should give developers enough time to implement the changes.

The Office of the New York Attorney General said in a new report that a campaign funded by the broadband industry submitted millions of fake comments supporting the 2017 repeal of net neutrality. wiggles shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission's contentious 2017 repeal undid Obama-era rules that barred internet service providers from slowing or blocking websites and apps or charging companies more for faster speeds to consumers. The industry had sued to stop these rules during the Obama administration but lost. The proceeding generated a record-breaking number of comments -- more than 22 million -- and nearly 18 million were fake, the attorney general's office found. It has long been known that the tally included fake comments. One 19-year-old in California submitted more than 7.7 million pro-net neutrality comments. The attorney general's office did not identify the origins of another "distinct group" of more than 1.6 million pro-net neutrality comments, many of which used mailing addresses outside the U.S. A broadband industry group, called Broadband for America, spent $4.2 million generating more than 8.5 million of the fake FCC comments. Half a million fake letters were also sent to Congress.

Most security experts agree that two-factor authentication (2FA) is a critical part of securing your online accounts. Google agrees, but it's taking an extra step: It's going to automatically sign Google account holders up for two-factor accounts. From a report: In a way, Google sees two-factor authentication as a replacement for passwords, which Mark Risher, Google's director of product management for identity and user security, in a statement called "the single biggest threat to your online security." Because they're easy to steal and hard to remember, users will end up reusing passwords. If stolen, they can be used to unlock multiple user accounts, adding to the risk. Google already uses 2FA to secure accounts, but it's been optional until now. According to Risher, Google will start "automatically enrolling users in 2SV [what Google calls 2FA] if their accounts are appropriately configured." However, Google said that users would be given an opportunity to opt out, too.

Nasty replies on Twitter will require a little more thought to send. From a report: The tech company said it is releasing a feature that automatically detects "mean" replies on its service and prompts people to review the replies before sending them. "Want to review this before Tweeting?" the prompt asks in a sample provided by the San Francisco-based company. Twitter users will have three options in response: tweet as is, edit or delete. The prompts are part of wider efforts at Twitter and other social media companies to rethink how their products are designed and what incentives they may have built in to encourage anger, harassment, jealousy or other bad behavior. Facebook-owned Instagram is testing ways to hide like counts on its service.

Around a third of all smartphones in the world are believed to be affected by a new vulnerability in a Qualcomm modem component that can grant attackers access to the device's call and SMS history and even audio conversations. From a report: The vulnerability -- tracked as CVE-2020-11292 -- resides in the Qualcomm mobile station modem (MSM), a chip that allows devices to connect to mobile networks. First designed in the early 90s, the chip has been updated across the years to support 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G cellular communications and has slowly become one of the world's most ubiquitous technologies, especially with smartphone vendors.

Devices that use Qualcomm MSM chips today include high-end smartphone models sold by Google, Samsung, LG, Xiaomi, and OnePlus, just to name a few. But in a report published today by Israeli security firm Check Point, the company said its researchers found a vulnerability in Qualcomm MSM Interface (QMI), the protocol that allows the chip to communicate with the smartphone's operating system. Researches said that malformed Type-Length-Value (TLV) packets received by the MSM component via the QMI interface could trigger a memory corruption (buffer overflow) that can allow attackers to run their own code.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Back in 2018, researchers from Brigham Young University demonstrated a device called an Optical Trap Display that used lasers to create free-floating holographic images that don't need a display. That same team is now demonstrating a new technique that allows those holographic images to be animated: goodbye TVs, hello holodecks. Most 3D holograms require a special screen to be displayed, and even then the 3D effect is limited to a small field of view. Images genuinely look like they exist in 3D space, but step to the side and suddenly you see nothing at all. The approach taken by the researchers at Brigham Young University is radically different. Screens are replaced by lasers: an invisible one that manipulates a tiny opaque particle floating in the air, and a visible one that illuminates the particle with different colors as it travels through a pre-defined path, creating what appears to be a floating image to a human observer. Unlike the restricted viewing angle of traditional holograms, an observer can see these free-floating Optical Trap Display images from any angle and can walk all the way around them without the 3D effect disappearing because the floating images are actually drawn in 3D space.

Three years of improving the technology used in the Optical Trap Displays has now allowed the BYU researchers to take the effect to the next step with animations that play out in front of an observer's eyes in real-time. The team demonstrated the amazing effect with tiny recreations of Star Trek spaceships engaged in a mid-air photon torpedo battle (complete with simulated explosions that look like vector animations straight out of Tron) and even miniature versions of Obi-Wan and Darth Vader dueling with glowing lightsabers made from actual lasers. The researchers have even come up with ways to track the movements of a real-life object and make the free-floating holograms appear to interact with its movements, like an animated stick figure character walking across a human finger. Using optical tricks like playing with perspective and parallax motions, the holograms could even be made to appear much larger than they really are when projected in front of a pair of eyes, so there are some potentially interesting applications when it comes to making viable smart glasses.

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday. Reuters reports: "Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas," Musk tweeted, responding to a post from a CNBC reporter that said the $99 deposits SpaceX took for the service were fully refundable and did not guarantee service. SpaceX has not set a date for Starlink's service launch, but commercial service would not likely be offered in 2020 as it had previously planned. The company plans to eventually deploy 12,000 satellites in total and has said the Starlink constellation will cost it roughly $10 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: There remains "little association" between technology use and mental-health problems, a study of more than 430,000 10 to 15-year-olds suggests. The Oxford Internet Institute compared TV viewing, social-media and device use with feelings of depression, suicidal tendencies and behavioral problems. It found a small drop in association between depression and social-media use and TV viewing, from 1991 to 2019. There was a small rise in that between emotional issues and social-media use. "We couldn't tell the difference between social-media impact and mental health in 2010 and 2019," study co-author Prof Andrew Przybylski. said. "We're not saying that fewer happy people use more social media. We're saying that the connection is not getting stronger." The paper is published in the journal Clinical Psychological Science.

LeeLynx shares a report from The Register: The majority of Android and iOS apps created for US public and private schools send student data to assorted third parties, researchers have found, calling into question privacy commitments from Apple and Google as app store stewards. The Me2B Alliance, a non-profit technology policy group, examined a random sample of 73 mobile applications used in 38 different schools across 14 US states and found 60 percent were transmitting student data. The apps in question send data using software development kits or SDKs, which consist of modular code libraries that can be used to implement utility functions, analytics, or advertising without the hassle of creating these capabilities from scratch. Examples include: Google's AdMob, Firebase, and Sign-in SDKs, Square's OK HTTP and Okio SDKs, and Facebook's Bolts SDK, among others.

The data that concerns Me2B includes: identifiers (IDFA, MAID, etc), Calendar, Contacts, Photos/Media Files, Location, Network Data (IP address), permissions related to Camera, Microphone, Device ID, and Calls. About 49 percent of the apps reviewed sent student data to Google and about 14 percent communicated with Facebook, with the balance routing info to advertising and analytics firms, many among them characterized as high risk by the Me2B researchers. Among the public school apps, 67 per cent sent data to third parties; private school apps proved less likely to send data to third parties (57 percent). Interestingly, the research group found a signifiant difference across mobile platforms. According to The Register, "91 percent of student Android apps sent data to high-risk third parties while only 26 percent of iOS apps did so, and 20 percent of Android apps piped data to very high-risk third parties while only 2.6 percent of iOS did so."

The report adds: "Nonetheless, the researchers expressed concern that 95 percent of third-party data channels in the surveyed student apps are active even when the user is not signed in and that these apps send data as soon as the app is loaded."

A Windows Defender bug creates thousands of small files that waste gigabytes of storage space on Windows 10 hard drives. BleepingComputer reports: The bug started with Windows Defender antivirus engine 1.1.18100.5 and will cause the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows Defender\Scans\History\Store folder to be filled up with thousands of files with names that appear to be MD5 hashes. From a system seen by BleepingComputer, the created files range in size from 600 bytes to a little over 1KB. While the system we looked at only had approximately 1MB of files, other Windows 10 users report that their systems have been filled up with hundreds of thousands of files, which in one case, used up 30GB of storage space. On smaller SSD system drives (C:), this can be a considerable amount of storage space to waste on unnecessary files. According to Deskmodder, who first reported on this issue, the bug has now been fixed in the latest Windows Defender engine, version 1.1.18100.6.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra expects the automaker to offer self-driving vehicles to consumers later this decade. CNBC reports: "Later in the decade, I believe, and there's a lot to still unfold, but I believe we'll have personal autonomous vehicles," she told investors Wednesday during the company's first-quarter earnings call. She did not specifically say GM would sell such vehicles directly to consumers. It could lease them or offer customers a subscription service like it did previously for Cadillac vehicles.

Barra's comments come after GM showcased a personal autonomous vehicle concept car for its Cadillac brand in January. The vehicle was based on the Origin, an autonomous shuttle from its majority-owned subsidiary Cruise. GM has a two-pronged approach regarding such systems. Cruise is leading development of fully autonomous vehicles, while the automaker expands its advanced driver-assist Super Cruise system to 22 vehicles by 2023. Barra said the goal for Super Cruise is to eventually offer hands-free driving in 95% of driving conditions. "Both paths are very important because the technology we put on vehicles today, I think makes them safer and delights the customers, and is going to give us an opportunity for subscription revenue," she said Wednesday. "And then the ultimate work that we're doing at Cruise that is full autonomous really opens up more possibilities than I think we can online today."

Privacy-oriented messaging app Signal tried to run a very candid ad campaign on Facebook-owned Instagram, but it wasn't meant to be. From a report: Signal explained how it went down in a blog post Tuesday. The idea was to post ads on Instagram which use the data an online advertiser may have collected about users, and basically show the user what that data might be for them. "You got this ad because you're a teacher, but more importantly you're a Leo (and single). This ad used your location to see you're in Moscow. You like to support sketch comedy, and this ad thinks you do drag," one of the ads said. According to Signal, the ad "would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses."

The fact that Facebook and similar companies collect your data isn't a secret. According to Signal, however "the full picture is hazy to most -- dimly concealed within complex, opaquely-rendered systems and fine print designed to be scrolled past." In other words, you may have consented to this because you weren't bothered to investigate the details, but you may feel differently if you knew exactly what online advertisers know about you. However, Facebook wasn't having it, and shut down both the campaign and Signal's ad account.

On iOS, Apple wants all the browsers to run WebKit. Even Google Chrome is forced to use WebKit on iOS devices. Alex Russel, Google's engineer, in a blog post outlines his case: Apple's iOS browser (Safari) and engine (WebKit) are uniquely under-powered. Consistent delays in the delivery of important features ensure the web can never be a credible alternative to its proprietary tools and App Store. Alex has cited an example of this by mentioning Stadia and other cloud gaming services. Apple did not allow those services to be available on the App Store and pushed them to use the web instead, which requires Apple to allow gamepad APIs so controllers can be used with these new web apps. That is a function that other browsers have offered for a long time except on iOS. He writes: Suppose Apple had implemented WebRTC and the Gamepad API in a timely way. Who can say if the game streaming revolution now taking place might have happened sooner? It's possible that Amazon Luna, NVIDIA GeForce NOW, Google Stadia, and Microsoft xCloud could have been built years earlier. It's also possible that APIs delivered on every other platform, but not yet available on any iOS browser (because Apple), may hold the key to unlocking whole categories of experiences on the web. Blog WCCFTech adds: Alex has also talked about how iOS browsers are underpowered in several other places compared to the competition. For starters, iOS browsers lack push notifications, standardized Progressive Web App (PWA) install buttons, background sync, and numerous other tools that make it easier for developers to make fully functional web apps. Access to hardware such as Bluetooth, USB, and NFC are also not easily available. Last but not least, the royalty-free AV1 standard is also not available.

Google is giving its employees more flexibility to work from different locations or entirely from home, taking a more lenient policy as the Alphabet company prepares for a return to office life after the pandemic. From a report: Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai outlined the plan to staff in a note Wednesday morning. The influential Silicon Valley giant, one of the first to send employees home in 2020, has slowly opened its offices, but said its employees can work remotely until September. Google has rearranged offices to create more features for what it calls a "hybrid" return to work. In the email, Pichai said he expects about 60% of Google's staff will work in the office "a few days a week." Another 20% will be able to relocate to other company sites, while the remaining one-fifth can apply to permanently work from home. Google's parent, Alphabet, ended the first quarter just shy of 140,000 direct employees.