Mozilla is "investigating" a design refresh for its Firefox browser. Ghacks reports that the refresh is referred to internally as "Photon." Information about the design refresh is limited at this point in time. Mozilla created a meta bug on Bugzilla as a reference to keep track of the changes. While there are not any mockups or screenshots posted on the site, the names of the bugs provide information on the elements that will get a refresh. These are:

- The Firefox address bar and tabs bar.
- The main Firefox menu.
- Infobars.
- Doorhangers.
- Context Menus.
- Modals.
Most user interface elements are listed in the meta bug. Mozilla plans to release the new design in Firefox 89; the browser is scheduled for a mid-2021 release. Its release date is set to May 18, 2021...

[Developer/Firefox extension author] Sören Hentzschel revealed that he saw some of the Firefox Proton mockups... He notes that Firefox will look more modern when the designs land and that Mozilla plans to introduce useful improvements, especially in regards to the user experience. Hentzschel mentions two examples of potential improvements to the user experience: a mockup that displays vertical tabs in a compact mode, and another that shows the grouping of tabs on the tab bar.

While EVs are still in the single-digit area of overall vehicle sales, they continue to climb and have already surpassed the sales of vehicles with manual transmissions. Now it seems that the electrification investments made by automakers are getting a boost from another part of the country. From a report: Massachusetts is joining California with a plan to ban the sale of new gasolined-powered cars by 2035. Governor Charlie Baker released a 2050 decarbonization road map that includes the reduction of emissions from passenger cars. Massachusetts states that 27 percent of statewide emissions come from light-duty vehicles (passenger vehicles). The goal is for the state to reach net-zero fossil-fuel emissions by 2050. In order to make sure those EVs are actually usable, the state plans to expand the public charging infrastructure to take into account that many people don't have a garage in which to charge an electric vehicle. The initiatives by California and now Massachusetts could be the beginning of a trend by states to slowly ban the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles. Several European countries have the same types of measures in order to battle climate change. Meanwhile, President-Elect Joe Biden has a plan to speed up the electrification of vehicles in the United States that includes replacing the country's fleets with EVs.

More than 100,000 Zyxel firewalls, VPN gateways, and access point controllers contain a hardcoded admin-level backdoor account that can grant attackers root access to devices via either the SSH interface or the web administration panel. From a report: The backdoor account, discovered by a team of Dutch security researchers from Eye Control, is considered as bad as it gets in terms of vulnerabilities. Device owners are advised to update systems as soon as time permits. Security experts warn that anyone ranging from DDoS botnet operators to state-sponsored hacking groups and ransomware gangs could abuse this backdoor account to access vulnerable devices and pivot to internal networks for additional attacks.

One of the biggest disappointments from CES 2021 going virtual will be the lack of a splashy booth by Google. Whether you cared about the company's bevy of Google Assistant-related announcements, it was hard to deny the stagecraft employed by the tech giant. From a report: For the last few years, Google boasted some of the most eye-catching CES booths, from a theme park ride in 2019 to an escape room back in January's show. Unlike other CES heavy hitters, like Samsung or LG, Google opted to place its typically massive "activations" in the parking lot in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, suddenly making that a trendy spot to place a booth. Google's booths largely pushed the benefits of Google Assistant, underscoring the importance of the digital assistant as it scrambled to claw back market share from Amazon's Alexa, which had a head start in the area thanks to Amazon's array of Echo speakers. Indeed, Google and its Assistant were part of a battle waged over digital assistants at past CES shows, with extravagant booths and with partners announcing that their respective assistants would come embedded in a new television, car or some other gadget. But with CES going virtual, a move dictated by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, many of the show's biggest names are opting to skip the show. Google will hold partner meetings, but it won't have a large presence at the show, according to a spokesman. It's not alone -- the Consumer Technology Association said it expects about 1,000 exhibitors at the virtual show, less than a quarter of the total from the January confab.

Samsung seems to be close to launching a new Tile-like device for tracking lost items. The tracker, likely called the Galaxy SmartTag, has been leaking out over the past month, and there's some speculation it could be announced alongside the Galaxy S21 later in January. From a report: The Galaxy SmartTag would use Bluetooth to connect with nearby devices and broadcast its location, so owners could find it later if they misplace whatever it's attached to. It'll be powered by a replaceable button cell battery, according to a regulatory filing spotted by GSMArena, so you won't have to throw it out and buy a new one when the battery dies. Samsung's tracker sounds a lot like a Tile, and it'll apparently look a lot like one, too.

LG's got a transparent OLED display, and if you're wondering how such a device could be useful, the company has a few ideas to share. From a report: Ahead of the upcoming CES 2021 show, LG shared a few ideas on how its transparent OLED products could fit into real-world situations. One idea is having a transparent OLED at a restaurant, where the display would pop up from the bar, between the customer and the waiter, allowing the customer to see the menu and order while still being able to see the waiter.

LG also designed a Smart Bed with a frame from which a transparent OLED TV can rise up, and retract to when not needed. The frame, which also features a set of speakers, can freely be moved around the house. Another example is having a 55-inch transparent OLED display at a subway train, where it replaces a traditional window. The customers could enjoy the scenery while viewing the weather forecast, the news, and information on subway lines.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced Thursday that it had completed the rollout of tap-to-pay scanners at all subway stations and on all of its buses throughout the city. From a report: The MTA has been installing the system, called OMNY, since May 2019 as part of a modernization effort to phase out the plastic MetroCards that have been in use since the '90s. The new tap-to-pay system is available at 472 stations and on 5,800 buses in total, the MTA said. [...] For now, you need a phone that supports NFC-based mobile payments in order to use the OMNY system. Later in 2021, the MTA will begin selling tap-to-pay cards that can be used in place of a phone -- an important addition since not all riders own a smartphone.

An anonymous reader shares an analysis: See, Google Maps is not just an app on your phone. It's also a suite of developer tools that power countless other applications that are used by millions of people every day. And that part of the business is known as the Google Maps Platform (but most of the time I hear it referred to as the Google Maps API). In 2018, Google inexplicably decided to self-sabotage their enterprise maps business by raising their prices ~1,400% overnight. The only time in my life that I've ever felt envious of commission-based sales people was in the wake of that announcement — I would have really liked to work at Mapbox as an order-taker that following quarter. Still, today, you need an MBA with a specialization in Mind Games to understand the Google Maps Platform pricing scheme, and it helps to have a joint law degree to navigate their terms of service. In fact, the ToS are so Draconian, they're the subject of investigations by the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law. My favorite tidbit from their recent report, Competition in Digital Markets quotes an anonymous Google Maps Platform customer:

Several developers stated that Google Maps introduced greater licensing restrictions as it gained a stronger market position. One noted that Google's control over what now serves as a key mapping technology has allowed Google to call all the shots. "We license Google Maps and it's essentially a contract of adhesion. It's full of restrictions and we aren't able to negotiate any changes," the developer said.

These are the actions of an organization that is annoyed they ever let people become their customers. And for what? A few hundred million in fees, maybe? That's likely nothing compared to the billions in advertising revenue from consumers searching for the best hamburger in town. So why not jack up the prices, lock down the data, and let 'em churn, baby, churn? The trouble is, Google isn't the only game in town anymore. If they keep alienating their customers and pursuing a proprietary data strategy at all costs, they're going to continue to lose ground to competition while spending more than ever just to tread water.

A few hours ago and after years of preparation, amendments to Japan's copyright law came into effect, aiming to criminalize those who download unlicensed manga, magazines, and academic texts from the Internet. From a report: While uploading pirated content has always been illegal, the new law is quite specific in that it criminalizes the downloading of unlicensed content. While that could take place in a simultaneous upload environment such as BitTorrent, it seems most likely that people will obtain content from websites instead. That presents some roadblocks to enforcement so we asked Ina how, from a technical perspective, will the authorities track, obtain evidence, and prosecute people who simply download content (comics, movies, music etc) to their machines but don't distribute? "The authorities shall use digital forensic technologies to track suspects' activities and collect evidence. The details of such technologies have not been publicly available," Masaharu Ina from Japan-based anti-piracy group CODA explained. "There are certain special units specialized in cyber crimes in each prefecture. For example, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police has its own Cyber Crime Control Unit. But the police do not investigate unless the person commits the crime repeatedly, intentionally and maliciously, i.e. innocent light downloaders shall not be prosecuted."

Tech's biggest companies just wrapped up a huge year. From a report: The seven most valuable U.S. technology companies -- Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, Tesla and Nvidia -- picked up a combined $3.4 trillion in market cap in 2020, powering through a global pandemic and broader economic crisis. Between continued optimism over iPhone sales, Microsoft's growing Teams collaboration product, Amazon's ongoing control of e-commerce and the strength of Google and Facebook's online ad duopoly, Big Tech was neither slowed by Covid-19 nor the rising number of investigations into its dominance. Tesla's wild rally served as the biggest surprise. The stock climbed almost ninefold this year, lifting the electric car maker's market cap from $76 billion at the beginning of the year to $669 billion at Thursday's close. Despite initial factory closures due to the pandemic, Tesla bounced back to deliver a record number of vehicles in the third quarter.

T-Mobile has announced a data breach exposing customers' proprietary network information (CPNI), including phone numbers and call records. From a report: Starting this week, T-Mobile began texting customers that a "security incident" exposed their account's information. According to T-Mobile, its security team recently discovered "malicious, unauthorized access" to their systems. After bringing in a cybersecurity firm to perform an investigation, T-Mobile found that threat actors gained access to the telecommunications information generated by customers, known as CPNI. The information exposed in this breach includes phone numbers, call records, and the number of lines on an account.

With the Flash Player officially reaching the end of life tomorrow, Adobe has started to display alerts on Windows computers recommending that users uninstall Flash Player. From a report: When Flash Player is installed, it creates a scheduled task named 'Adobe Flash Player PPAPI Notifier' that executes the following command: "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil32_32_0_0_465_pepper.exe" -update pepperplugin. When this command is executed, it is now displaying an alert thanking users for using Adobe Flash Player and then recommending that they uninstall the program due to its looming end of life. Further reading: Adobe Flash is about to die, but classic Flash games will live on.

The Moynihan Train Hall, with glass skylights and 92-foot-high ceilings, will open Jan. 1 as an area for Amtrak and Long Island Railroad riders. The New York Times: For more than half a century, New Yorkers have trudged through the crammed platforms, dark hallways and oppressively low ceilings of Pennsylvania Station, the busiest and perhaps most miserable train hub in North America. Entombed beneath Madison Square Garden, the station served 650,000 riders each weekday before the pandemic, or three times the number it was built to handle. But as more commuters return to Penn Station next year, they will be welcomed by a new, $1.6 billion train hall complete with over an acre of glass skylights, art installations and 92-foot-high ceilings that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who championed the project, has likened to the majestic Grand Central Terminal. After nearly three years of construction, the new Moynihan Train Hall, in the James A. Farley Post Office building across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station, will open to the public on Jan. 1 as a waiting room for Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road passengers.

For decades, the huge undertaking was considered an absolution of sorts for one of the city's greatest sins: the demolition in the 1960s of the original Penn Station building, an awe-inspiring structure that was a stately gateway to the country's economic powerhouse. The destruction of the station was a turning point in New York's civic life. It prompted a fierce backlash among defenders of the city's architectural heritage, the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission and renewed efforts to protect Grand Central Terminal. That the project has been completed during a period when the city was brought to a standstill is a hopeful reminder that the bustle of Midtown Manhattan will return, Mr. Cuomo said. The train hall "sends a clear message to the world that while we suffered greatly as a result of this once-in-a-century health crisis, the pandemic did not stop us from dreaming big and building for the future," he added. The project has its detractors, who fault state officials for not going far enough in reimagining Penn Station. These critics note that the Moynihan Train Hall will serve only some of the passengers who use Penn Station, ignoring the needs of subway riders.

Ed Bott, writing at ZDNet: With a heartfelt nod to Monty Python, Windows 7 would like you all to know that it's not dead yet. A year after Microsoft officially ended support for its long-running OS, a small but determined population of PC users would rather fight than switch. How many? No one knows for sure, but that number has shrunk substantially in the past year. On the eve of Microsoft's Windows 7 end-of-support milestone, I consulted some analytics experts and calculated that the owners of roughly 200 million PCs worldwide would ignore that deadline and continue running their preferred OS. That was, admittedly, a rough estimate. During the holiday lull at the end of 2020, I decided to go back and run the latest version of those analytics reports. They tell a consistent story.

Let's start with the United States Government Digital Analytics Program, which reports a running, unfiltered total of visitors to U.S. websites over the previous 90 days. One of the datasets includes a report of visits from all PCs running any version of Windows, which makes it an ideal proxy for this question. At the end of December 2019, 75.8% of those PCs were running Windows 10, 18.9% were still on Windows 7, and a mere 4.6% were sticking with the unloved Windows 8.x. A year later, as December 2020 draws to a close, the proportion of PCs running Windows 10 has gone up 12%, to 87.8%; the Windows 7 count has dropped by more than 10 points, to 8.5%, and the population of Windows 8.x holdouts has shrunk even further, to a minuscule 3.4%. (The onetime champion of PC operating systems, Windows XP, is now nearly invisible, with its device count adding up to a fraction of a rounding error.)

A new report by Sensor Tower reveals that 2020 has been a record-setting year for worldwide spending on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which collectively passed $100 billion in a single year for the first time ever in November. From a report: The trend of increased spending continued over Christmas, when consumers around the world spent an estimated $407.6 million across Apple's App Store and Google Play. This represents a 34.5 percent year-on-year growth from approximately $303 million in 2019. At the same time in 2019, spending only increased by 17.1 percent year-on-year. Spending on Christmas day constituted 4.5 percent of December's total spending so far, which reached nine billion dollars globally on December 27. The majority of holiday spending was on mobile games, which climbed by 27 percent from $232.4 million at the same time last year to $295.6 million. Tencent's "Honor of Kings" was the leading game with approximately $10.7 million in consumer spending, which is a 205.7 percent increase from Christmas 2019. TikTok was the top app for spending outside of games, generating $4.7 million globally. Following previous years, Apple's App Store captured the majority of spending between the App Store and the Google Play Store, with 68.4 percent of spending, up 35.2 percent year-on-year. The Google Play Store saw $129 million in revenue compared to the App Store's $278.6 million.

Detente is ending in the global fight over tech taxes. Earlier this year, France agreed to suspend collection of a tax on digital revenue from large technology companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Alphabet's Google. Meanwhile, the U.S. delayed the application of tariffs it was putting on French goods in retaliation for the tax. But now France has resumed collecting what is known as its digital-services tax, a French official said. Other countries, including Italy and the U.K., whose similar taxes went into effect this year, are also set to begin collection in coming months. From a report: The U.S., meanwhile, is set on Jan. 6 to impose tariffs on $1.3 billion of French imports, including cosmetics and handbags. Washington also has pending investigations that could lead to similar tariffs on 10 other countries, including the U.K., Italy, India and Spain. At issue in the dispute is how to tax an increasingly digital economy. For decades, tax treaties have generally allocated corporate profit based on where value is created. But modern multinationals -- particularly ones with digital offerings -- can sell their products across borders in ways that leave little taxable profit in a country where those products are consumed.

France and some other big European countries say tech companies should pay more taxes in the countries where their users and clients are located, something that could boost their tax revenues. But in long-running multilateral talks on how to update the tax system, the U.S. has opposed any solution that is too targeted at tech companies -- slowing progress. "These taxes are a reaction to dissatisfaction with how long it has taken to get a global multilateral solution," said Manal Corwin, who served as deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department in the Obama administration, and now works at accounting firm KPMG. "You may need some trade battles back and forth before there's a strong incentive to say, 'OK, enough.'"

Another service is joining the Google graveyard, for better or worse. As the latest in a long series of Google service shutdowns, Cloud Print will be terminated in just a few short hours, meaning it will no longer be accessible for ChromeOS customers or others. From a report: Most internet users have probably never used Cloud Print a single time -- it was primarily designed for ChromeOS customers who had limited or no access to traditional printers years ago. However, now that ChromeOS boasts much broader support for printing devices, Cloud Print has effectively become obsolete. It still has a few unique advantages, such as the ability to share your printers with friends, but for the most part, there's no reason for Google to keep it around.

Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices -- a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google's platform. From a report: The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier this year, where Google had first introduced a carousel of "Short Videos" within Google Discover -- the personalized feed found in the Google mobile app and to the left of the home screen on some Android devices. To be clear, this "Short Videos" carousel is different from Google's Stories, which rolled out in October 2020 to the Google Search app for iOS and Android. Those "Stories" -- previously known as "AMP Stories" -- consist of short-form video content created by Google's online publishing partners like Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist and others. Meanwhile, the "Short Videos" carousel had been focused on aggregating social video from other platforms, including Google's own short-form video project Tangi, Indian TikTok competitor Trell, as well as Google's own video platform, YouTube -- which has also been experimenting with short-form content as of late.

In recent years, investigators have realized that automobiles -- particularly newer models -- can be treasure troves of digital evidence. Their onboard computers generate and store data that can be used to reconstruct where a vehicle has been and what its passengers were doing. From a report: They reveal everything from location, speed and acceleration to when doors were opened and closed, whether texts and calls were made while the cellphone was plugged into the infotainment system, as well as voice commands and web histories. But that boon for forensic investigators creates fear for privacy activists, who warn that the lack of information security baked into vehicles' computers poses a risk to consumers and who call for safeguards to be put in place. "I hear a lot of analogies of cars being smartphones on wheels. But that's vastly reductive," said Andrea Amico, founder of Privacy4Cars, which makes a free app that helps people delete their data from automobiles and makes its money by offering the service to rental companies and dealerships. "If you think about the amount of sensors in a car, the smartphone is a toy. A car has GPS, an accelerometer, a camera. A car will know how much you weigh. Most people don't realize this is happening."

Law enforcement agencies have been focusing their investigative efforts on two main information sources: the telematics system -- which is like the "black box" -- and the infotainment system. The telematics system stores a vehicle's turn-by-turn navigation, speed, acceleration and deceleration information, as well as more granular clues, such as when and where the lights were switched on, the doors were opened, seat belts were put on and airbags were deployed. The infotainment system records recent destinations, call logs, contact lists, text messages, emails, pictures, videos, web histories, voice commands and social media feeds. It can also keep track of the phones that have been connected to the vehicle via USB cable or Bluetooth, as well as all the apps installed on the device. Together, the data allows investigators to reconstruct a vehicle's journey and paint a picture of driver and passenger behavior. In a criminal case, the sequence of doors opening and seat belts being inserted could help show that a suspect had an accomplice.

References to decades-old computer software are included in the new Brexit agreement, including a description of Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Mail as being "modern" services. From a report: Experts believe officials must have copied and pasted chunks of text from old legislation into the document. The references are on page 921 of the trade deal, in a section on encryption technology. It also recommends using systems that are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The text cites "modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x." The latter two are now defunct - the last major release of Netscape Communicator was in 1997. The document also recommends using 1024-bit RSA encryption and the SHA-1 hashing algorithm, which are both outdated and vulnerable to cyber-attacks.