Apple is planning to start using its own custom displays in mobile devices as early as 2024, an effort to reduce its reliance on technology partners like Samsung and LG and bring more components in-house. From a report: The company aims to begin by swapping out the display in the highest-end Apple Watches by the end of next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The screens upgrade the current OLED -- organic light-emitting diode -- standard to a technology called microLED, and Apple plans to eventually bring the displays to other devices, including the iPhone. The changes are part of a sweeping effort to replace Apple supplies with homegrown parts, an undertaking that will give the company more control over the design and capabilities of its products. The tech giant has dropped Intel chips in its Mac computers in favor of in-house designs and plans to do the same with the key wireless components in its iPhones.

According to Windows Central's Zac Bowden, Microsoft's next foldable Surface phone will feature "a more traditional foldable design, with a 180-degree hinge, internal foldable screen and external cover display." Bowden writes: I'm told this new foldable device came about after the company had already finalized a dual-screen design for Surface Duo 3. This original dual-screen design was supposed to ship at the end of 2023 as the next Surface Duo, featuring narrower and taller edge-to-edge displays, wireless charging, and other improvements. That dual-screen design has now been scrapped, and the Surface team is now focused on delivering this new "true" foldable design. Microsoft began exploring single-screen foldable designs as a potential successor to the Surface Duo 2 in late 2021 after it launched and was met with mixed reviews.

It's still too early to know the exact specs that this new foldable device is going to feature hardware wise, or whether or not Microsoft plans to simulate a dual-screen experience via a software feature or mode. My sources say there's no concrete shipping window for the device in place yet either, meaning it's unlikely to be ready in time for this fall. [...] Of course, with the change in form factor may also come a change in name. It's still too early to tell, but given this device isn't a traditional Duo in form factor, perhaps the company will take this opportunity to rebrand the line, similar to what it did with the Surface Book and Surface Laptop Studio. Regardless, sources tell me this device is still considered a third-generation Duo internally. Bowden goes on to say that Microsoft remains "all-in" on delivering its own Android hardware and software. There's a larger software effort ongoing internally that aims to "deliver an ecosystem experience between Microsoft's Android hardware and Windows PCs similar to that between an iPhone and Mac."

The company has also been "exploring different form factors to ship in addition to a foldable device."

"We are seeing, across the gamut, products that impact our privacy, products that create cybersecurity risks, that have overarchingly long-term environmental impacts, disposable products, and flat-out just things that maybe should not exist."

That's the CEO of the how-to repair site iFixit, introducing their third annual "Worst in Show" ceremony for the products displayed at this year's CES. But the show's slogan promises it's also "calling out the most troubling trends in tech." For example, the EFF's executive director started with two warnings. First, "If it's communicating with your phone, it's generally communicating to the cloud too." But more importantly, if a product is gathering data about you and communicating with the cloud, "you have to ask yourself: is this company selling something to me, or are they selling me to other people? And this year, as in many past years at CES, it's almost impossible to tell from the products and the advertising copy around them! They're just not telling you what their actual business model is, and because of that — you don't know what's going on with your privacy."

After warning about the specific privacy implications of a urine-analyzing add-on for smart toilets, they noted there was a close runner-up for the worst privacy: the increasing number of scam products that "are basically based on the digital version of phrenology, like trying to predict your emotions based upon reading your face or other things like that. There's a whole other category of things that claim to do things that they cannot remotely do."

To judge the worst in show by environmental impact, Consumer Reports sent the Associate Director for their Product Sustainability, Research and Testing team, who chose the 55-inch portable "Displace TV" for being powered only by four lithium-ion batteries (rather than, say, a traditional power cord).

And the "worst in show" award for repairability went to the Ember Mug 2+ — a $200 travel mug "with electronics and a battery inside...designed to keep your coffee hot." Kyle Wiens, iFixit's CEO, first noted it was a product which "does not need to exist" in a world which already has equally effective double-insulated, vaccuum-insulated mugs and Thermoses. But even worse: it's battery powered, and (at least in earlier versions) that battery can't be easily removed! (If you email the company asking for support on replacing the battery, Wiens claims that "they will give you a coupon on a new, disposable coffee mug. So this is the kind of product that should not exist, doesn't need to exist, and is doing active harm to the world.

"The interesting thing is people care so much about their $200 coffee mug, the new feature is 'Find My iPhone' support. So not only is it harming the environment, it's also spying on where you're located!"

The founder of SecuRepairs.org first warned about "the vast ecosystem of smart, connected products that are running really low-quality, vulnerable software that make our persons and our homes and businesses easy targets for hackers." But for the worst in show for cybersecurity award, they then chose Roku's new Smart TV, partly because smart TVs in general "are a problematic category when it comes to cybersecurity, because they're basically surveillance devices, and they're not created with security in mind." And partly because to this day it's hard to tell if Roku has fixed or even acknowledged its past vulnerabilities — and hasn't implemented a prominent bug bounty program. "They're not alone in this. This is a problem that affects electronics makers of all different shapes and sizes at CES, and it's something that as a society, we just need to start paying a lot more attention to."

And US Pirg's "Right to Repair" campaign director gave the "Who Asked For This" award to Neutrogena's "SkinStacks" 3D printer for edible skin-nutrient gummies — which are personalized after phone-based face scans. ("Why just sell vitamins when you could also add in proprietary refills and biometic data harvesting.")

Four years after introducing its MicroLED technology at CES 2018, Samsung claims the technology is ready for the masses and "will set the standard for picture quality in 2023," reports Engadget. From the report: At CES 2023, the company announced it would offer 50-, 63-, 76-, 89-, 101-, 114- and 140-inch MicroLED models, greatly expanding the amount of choice consumers have when it comes to the new display technology. Samsung didn't provide pricing and availability information for the expanded line, but the company claims the new models are its most affordable MicroLED TVs to date. [...] The set sports a 240Hz variable refresh rate and 2-nanosecond response time. It also offers 20-bit black detail for "intense" contrast.

Samsung is also promising upgrades for its Neo QLED sets, starting with the line's new flagship. The QN900C features an 8K Quantum MiniLED-lit panel capable of maxing out at 4,000 nits of brightness. As with Samsung's 2022 Neo QLED sets, the QN900C features a 14-bit backlight. However, the TV offers even better contrast thanks to a tweak the company made to its 8K Real Depth Enhancer Pro software. Samsung is also promising improved picture quality when viewing older movies and TV shows thanks to the inclusion of its new Auto HDR Remastering algorithm, which can automatically apply HDR effects to standard dynamic range content.

For those who would prefer a 4K set, there's also the QN935C. Samsung's new 4K flagship features a redesigned power board that eliminates the need for an external connection box and allows for bezels that are less than 20mm thick. The QN935C also features top-firing speakers, allowing the set to produce Dolby Atmos sound without a dedicated soundbar. You can use both the QN900C and QN935C as a smart home hub thanks to the fact Samsung's entire 2023 Neo QLED line will feature built-in Zigbee and Matter Thread all-in-one modules. As for its OLED models, Samsung announced the 2023 QD-OLED TV line, which will offer up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and support 144Hz refresh rates -- all while being more energy efficient than before. "Additionally, the company has gone out of its way to get the panels AMD FreeSync Premium Pro certified," adds Engadget.

During the CES 2023 in Las Vegas today, Asus announced an upcoming feature that allows users to view and work with content in 3D without wearing 3D glasses. Ars Technica reports: Similar technology has been used in a small number of laptops and displays before, but Asus is incorporating the feature for the first time in OLED laptop screens. Combined with high refresh rates, unique input methods like an integrated dial, and the latest CPUs and laptop GPUs, the company is touting the laptops with the Asus Spatial Vision feature as powerful, niche options for creative professionals looking for new ways to work.

Asus' Spatial Vision 3D tech is debuting on two laptops in Q2 this year: the ProArt Studiobook 16 3D OLED (H7604) and Vivobook Pro 16 3D OLED (K6604). The laptops each feature a 16-inch, 3200x2000 OLED panel with a 120 Hz refresh rate. The OLED panel is topped with a layer of optical resin, a glass panel, and a lenticular lens layer. The lenticular lens works with a pair of eye-tracking cameras to render real-time images for each eye that adjust with your physical movements. In a press briefing, an Asus spokesperson said that because the OLED screens claim a low gray-to-gray response time of 0.2 ms, as well as the extremely high contrast that comes with OLED, there's no crosstalk between the left and right eye's image, ensuring more realistic looking content. However, Asus' product pages for the laptops acknowledge that experiences may vary, and some may still suffer from "dizziness or crosstalk due to other reasons, and this varies according to the individual." Asus said it's looking to offer demos to users, which would be worth trying out before committing to this unique feature.

On top of the lenticular lens is a 2D/3D liquid crystal switching layer, which is topped with a glass front panel with an anti-reflective coating. According to Asus, it'll be easy to switch from 2D mode to 3D and back again. When the laptops aren't in 3D mode, their display will appear as a highly specced OLED screen, Asus claimed. The laptops can apply a 3D effect to any game, movie, or content that supports 3D. However, content not designed for 3D display may appear more "stuttery," per a demo The Verge saw. The laptops are primarily for workers working with and creating 3D models and content, such as designers and architects. The two laptops will ship with Spatial Vision Hub software. It includes a Model Viewer, Player for movies and videos, Photo Viewer for transforming side-by-side photos shot with a 180-degree camera into one stereoscopic 3D image, and Connector, a plug-in that Asus' product page says is compatible with "various apps and tools, so you can easily view any project in 3D."

2022 was the year that Microsoft retired its Internet Explorer web browser (to concentrate on its Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser).

Yet Ghacks reports that Internet Explorer "is still haunting some from its grave." Some websites and apps use code to determine the user agent. The user agent informs the site about several parameters, including the used web browser (engine) and operating system. When done correctly, it may reveal the used browser and that may then lead to a custom user experience.

When done incorrectly, it may lead to false identification; this is exactly what is happening on some sites currently regarding Internet Explorer user agent sniffing and the Firefox web browser. Some sites identify Firefox as Internet Explorer because of inaccurate user agent sniffing..
Internet Explorer 11's user agent ends by identifying its release version as rv:11.0, the article points out. So when a Firefox user visits a website using Firefox 110 (or any other version up to Firefox 119), "The site in question checks for rv:11 in the user agent [and] Firefox's rv:110 value is identified wrongly as Internet Explorer."

Instead of risking problems with functionality, compatibility, or other display issues for Firefox versions 110 through 119, Mozilla has "decided to freeze part of Firefox's version." Instead of echoing rv:110, rv:111 and so on up to rv:119, Firefox returns rv:109 instead. The end of the user agent string displays the actual version of Firefox still. Mozilla plans to restore the original user agent of Firefox with the release of Firefox 120. The organization plans to release Firefox 120 on November 21, 2023.

An anonymous reader shares a report: CES 2023 is now just days away, and there's already a standout category that we're particularly excited about: 240Hz OLED gaming monitors. Generally speaking, OLED panels can achieve better picture quality and a faster response time than their LED or IPS equivalents but have historically lacked the ability to match them in providing high-refresh rates. There have been some exceptions -- such as the Alienware AW3423DW, a QD-OLED running at 175Hz -- but now, OLED gaming displays have finally achieved the optimal 240Hz refresh rate prized by gamers who specialize in eSports and FPS titles. There are several 240Hz OLED displays (that we're aware of) being showcased at the CES 2023 conference. One of the more innovative offerings is the Corsair Xeneon Flex, a 45-inch OLED with a customizable curvature and a $1,999 price tag. By squeezing the screen together, you can switch between flat and 800R curved display modes, making it ideal for both work and play.

An international police operation has dismantled an online spoofing service that allowed cybercriminals to impersonate trusted corporations to steal more than $120 million from victims. From a report: iSpoof, which now displays a message stating that it has been seized by the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service, offered "spoofing" services that enabled paying users to mask their phone numbers with one belonging to a trusted organization, such as banks and tax offices, to carry out social engineering attacks. "The services of the website allowed those who sign up and pay for the service to anonymously make spoofed calls, send recorded messages, and intercept one-time passwords," Europol said in a statement on Thursday. "The users were able to impersonate an infinite number of entities for financial gain and substantial losses to victims."

London's Metropolitan Police, which began investigating iSpoof in June 2021 along with international law enforcement agencies, in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Ukraine, said it had arrested the website's suspected administrator, named as Teejai Fletcher, 34, charged with fraud and offenses related to organized crime. Fletcher was remanded to custody and will appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on December 6. iSpoof had around 59,000 users, which caused $58.2 million of losses to 200,000 identified victims in the U.K., according to the Met Police. One victim was scammed out of $3.64 million, while the average amount stolen was $12,100.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Nintendo has issued a number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) requests against SteamGridDB (SGDB), a site that hosts custom fan-made icons and images used to represent games on Steam's front-end interface. Since 2015, SGDB's collection has grown to include hundreds of thousands of images representing tens of thousands of titles. That includes custom imagery for many standard Steam games and emulated game ROMs, which can be added to Steam as "external games."

To be clear, SteamGridDB doesn't host the kind of ROM files that have gotten other sites in legal trouble with Nintendo, or even the emulators used to run those games. "We don't support piracy in any way," an SGDB admin (who asked to remain anonymous) told Ars. "The website is just a free repository where people can share options to customize their game launchers." But in a series of DMCA requests viewed by Ars Technica, dated October 27, Nintendo says some of the imagery on SGDB "displays Nintendo's trademarks and other intellectual property (including characters) which is likely to lead to consumer confusion." Thus, dozens of SGDB images have been replaced with a blank image featuring the text "this asset has been removed in response to a DMCA takedown request" (you can see some of the specific images that were removed in this Internet Archive snapshot from April and compare it to how the listing currently looks).

Thus far, Nintendo's DMCA requests focus on imagery for just five Switch games that are listed on SGDB: Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, Splatoon 3, Super Mario Odyssey, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Other Switch games listed on the site (some featuring the same exact characters) are unaffected, as are images for many older Nintendo titles. [...] Even for the Switch games in question, the DMCA requests focused on images that "straight up used sprites and assets from [Nintendo's] IP," according to the SGDB admin. Nintendo's requests so far seem to have ignored "completely original creations" and "pure fan art" even when that art involves drawings of Nintendo's original characters. It's unclear if those kinds of images would fall under a different legal standard in this case. "If an IP holder asks to take down original creations then I'll figure out the best way to handle that when it happens," the admin said. "The site is basically all just fan art, we're open to publishers reaching out and discussing any issues they may have. [The] best way to find a good course of action is to discuss options."

The Browser Company's Chromium-based Arc browser "isn't perfect, and it takes some getting used to," writes the Verge. "But it's full of big new ideas about how we should interact with the web — and it's right about most of them." Arc wants to be the web's operating system. So it built a bunch of tools that make it easier to control apps and content, turned tabs and bookmarks into something more like an app launcher, and built a few platform-wide apps of its own. The app is much more opinionated and much more complicated than your average browser with its row of same-y tabs at the top of the screen. Another way to think about it is that Arc treats the web the way TikTok treats video: not as a fixed thing for you to consume but as a set of endlessly remixable components for you to pull apart, play with, and use to create something of your own. Want something to look better or have an idea for what to do with it? Go for it.

This is a fun moment in the web browser industry. After more than a decade of total Chrome dominance, users are looking elsewhere for more features, more privacy, and better UI. Vivaldi has some really clever features; SigmaOS is also betting on browsers as operating systems; Brave has smart ideas about privacy; even Edge and Firefox are getting better fast. But Arc is the biggest swing of them all: an attempt to not just improve the browser but reinvent it entirely....

Right now, Arc is only available for the Mac, but the company has said it's also working on Windows and mobile versions, both due next year. It's still in a waitlisted beta and is still very much a beta app, with some basic features missing, other features still in flux, and a few deeply annoying bugs. But Arc's big ideas are the right ones. I don't know if The Browser Company is poised to take on giants and win the next generation of the browser wars, but I'd bet that the future of browsers looks a lot like Arc....

In a way, Arc is more like ChromeOS than Chrome. It tries to expand the browser to become the only app you need because, in a world where all your apps are web apps and all your files are URLs, who really needs more than a browser?
The article describes Arc as a power user tool with vertical sidebar combining bookmarks, tabs, and apps. (And sets of these can apparently be combined into different "spaces".) These are enhanced with a hefty set of keyboard shortcuts (including tab searching), along with built-in media controls for Twitch/Spotify/Google Meet (as well as a picture-in-picture mode).
BR. Arc even has a shareable, collaborative whiteboard app "Easel". And it also offers powerful features like the ability to rewrite how your browser displays any site's CSS. ("I have one that removes the Trending sidebar from Twitter and another that cleans up my Gmail page.")

A new map of the universe displays for the first time the span of the entire known cosmos with pinpoint accuracy and sweeping beauty. Phys.Org reports: Created by Johns Hopkins University astronomers with data mined over two decades by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the map allows the public to experience data previously only accessible to scientists. The interactive map, which depicts the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies, is available online, where it can also be downloaded for free.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey is a pioneering effort to capture the night sky through a telescope based in New Mexico. Night after night for years, the telescope aimed at slightly different locations to capture this unusually broad perspective. The map, which [map creator Brice Manard] assembled with the help of former Johns Hopkins computer science student Nikita Shtarkman, visualizes a slice of the universe, or about 200,000 galaxies -- each dot on the map is a galaxy and each galaxy contains billions of stars and planets. The Milky Way is simply one of these dots, the one at the very bottom of the map.

The expansion of the universe contributes to make this map even more colorful. The farther an object, the redder it appears. The top of the map reveals the first flash of radiation emitted soon after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago. "In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets," Manard says. "We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale." For those interested, Johns Hopkins University published a video about the map on YouTube.

David Pierce writes via The Verge: In the summer of 2019, Kevin Moody and Dennis Xu started meeting with investors to pitch their new app. They had this big idea about reshaping the way users' personal information moves around the internet, coalescing all their data into a single tool in a way that could actually work for them. But they quickly ran into a problem: all of their mock-ups and descriptions made it seem like they were building a note-taking app. And even in those hazy early days of product development -- before they had a prototype, a design, even a name -- they were crystal clear that this would not be a note-taking app. Instead, the founders wanted to create something much bigger. It would encompass all of your notes but also your interests, your viewing history, your works-in-progress. "Imagine if you had a Google search bar but for all nonpublic information," Xu says. "For every piece of information that was uniquely relevant to you."

That's what Moody and Xu were actually trying to build. So they kept tweaking the approach until it made sense. At one point, their app was going to be called NSFW, a half-joke that stood for "Notes and Search for Work," and for a while, it was called Supernote. But after a few meetings and months, they eventually landed on the name "Mem." Like Memex, a long-imagined device that humans could use to store their entire memory. Or like, well, memory. Either way, it's not a note-taking app. It's more like a protocol for private information, a way to pipe in everything that matters to you -- your email, your calendar events, your airline confirmations, your meeting notes, that idea you had on the train this morning -- and then automatically organize and make sense of it all. More importantly, it's meant to use cutting-edge AI to give all that information back to you at exactly the right time and in exactly the right place. [...]

So far, Mem is mostly a note-taking app. It's blisteringly fast and deliberately sparse -- mostly just a timeline of every mem (the company's parlance for an individual note) you've ever created or viewed, with a few simple ways to categorize and organize them. It does tasks and tags, but a full-featured project manager or Second Brain system this is not. But if you look carefully, the app already contains a few signs of where Mem is headed: a tool called Writer that can actually generate information for you, based on both its knowledge of the public internet and your personal information; AI features that summarize tweet threads for you; a sidebar that automatically displays mems related to what you're working on. All this still barely scratches the surface of what Mem wants to do and will need to do to be more than a note-taking app...

Microsoft has started testing a new search and filtering system for the Task Manager on Windows 11. It will allow Windows users to easily search for a misbehaving app and end its process or quickly create a dump file, enable efficiency mode, and more. From a report: "This is the top feature request from our users to filter / search for processes," explains the Windows Insider team in a blog post. "You can filter either using the binary name, PID or publisher name. The filter algorithm matches the context keyword with all possible matches and displays them on the current page." You'll be able to use the alt + F keyboard shortcut to jump to the filter box in the Task Manager, and results will be filtered into single or groups of processes that you can monitor or take action on. Alongside the new search and filter functionality, Microsoft is also adding the ability to pick between light or dark themes in the Task Manager. Themes will also be applied fully throughout Task Manager, with some updates to its UI to fit more closely with Microsoft's overall Fluent work.

Social media platform Twitter today announced that it will let users buy, sell, and display NFTs directly through tweets in partnership with four marketplaces. Decrypt reports: The integration, called NFT Tweet Tiles, displays the artwork of an NFT in a dedicated panel within a tweet, and includes a button to let users click through to a marketplace listing. The integration -- which is still in testing -- currently works with marketplaces from four specific partners: Solana-centric marketplace Magic Eden, multi-platform NFT marketplace protocol Rarible, Flow blockchain creator Dapper Labs, and sports-centric platform Jump.trade. Collectively, those marketplaces span several blockchain networks, including Ethereum, Solana, Flow, Polygon, Tezos, and Immutable X.

A Twitter representative confirmed to Decrypt that the feature is blockchain-agnostic, so all networks are supported so long as the links are from a partnered marketplace. The representative added that the "feature is currently being tested with select Twitter users across iOS and web," and that those users will see the NFT Tweet Tile integration if they're in the test group. A Twitter Blue premium subscription is not required to use the feature.

Do you have a laptop that's either "pretty old" or "weird in some other way"? Did it ship without Windows from the factory, or did you flash its firmware with coreboot? You could help the Linux kernel move its backlight code forward without abandoning quirky gear like yours. ArsTechnica: Hans de Goede, a longtime Linux developer and principal engineer at Red Hat, writes on his Livejournal about the need to test "a special group of laptops" to prevent their backlight controls from disappearing in Linux kernel 6.1. Old laptop tests are needed because de Goede is initiating some major changes to user-space backlight controls, something he has been working on since 2014. As detailed at Linux blog Phoronix, there are multiple issues with how Linux tries to address the wide variety of backlight schemes in displays, which de Goede laid out at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference. There can be multiple backlight devices operating a single display, leaving high-level controls to "guess which one will work." Brightness control requires root permissions at the moment. And "0" passed along as a backlight value remains a conundrum, as the engineer pointed out in 2014: Is that entirely off, or as low as the display can be lit?

An update for Spotify's iOS app released Thursday had a big change for its audiobooks vertical -- and not for the better. The app no longer indicates how you can buy any of the audiobooks in its store, posing a major roadblock for its new business. Now when you go to make a purchase, the app displays a mostly empty screen saying, "Want to listen? You can't buy audiobooks in the app. We know, it's not ideal." There's no indication of where you might be able to buy the book. From a report: The update follows a statement from Spotify on Tuesday in which the audio streamer accused Apple of "choking competition" with its app rules for audiobook purchasing. It is worth noting that Apple also sells individual audiobooks through its Books app, which can be purchased in-app. When Spotify's audiobooks feature launched a month ago, users could not buy titles directly in the app, but they could tap a button that would email them a link to purchase the book on the web. Once the purchase was made, the title would become available for listening in the app. Now, users have to go to Spotify's audiobooks hub in a web browser or through the desktop app in order to make a purchase.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it would be releasing new hardware to encourage more developers to start using and supporting the Arm version of Windows. Dubbed "Project Volterra," all we knew about it at the time was that it would use an unnamed Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and NVMe-based storage, that it would support at least two monitors, and that it would have a decent number of ports. Today, Microsoft is putting Volterra out into the world, complete with a snappy new name: the Windows Dev Kit 2023. From a report: The Dev Kit 2023 will use a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 -- essentially the same chip as the Microsoft SQ3 in the new 5G version of the Surface Pro 9 -- plus 512GB of storage and a whopping 32GB of RAM for the surprisingly low price of $599.

We don't know exactly how fast the 8cx Gen 3 will be (Qualcomm says "up to 85 percent faster" CPU performance than the 8cx Gen 2, which would put it somewhere below but within spitting distance of modern Core i5 laptop CPU). But 512GB of storage and 32GB of memory should make the Dev Kit 2023 useful as a development and testing environment. Microsoft says the box can connect to up to three monitors simultaneously using its two USB-C ports and mini DisplayPort and that up to two of those displays can be 4K screens running at 60 Hz. Three USB-A ports, gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.1 round out the connectivity options.

Canonical blog: Codenamed "Kinetic Kudu," this interim release improves the experience of enterprise developers and IT administrators. It also includes the latest toolchains and applications with a particular focus on the IoT ecosystem. Ubuntu 22.10 delivers toolchain updates to Ruby, Go, GCC and Rust. OpenSSH in Ubuntu 22.10 is configured by default to use systemd socket activation, meaning that sshd will not be started until an incoming connection request is received. This reduces the memory footprint of Ubuntu Server on smaller devices, VMs or LXD containers. Ubuntu 22.10 also comes with a new debuginfod service to help developers and admins debug programs shipped with Ubuntu. Debugging tools like gdb will automatically download the required debug symbols over HTTPS.

Ubuntu 22.10 now supports MicroPython on a variety of microcontrollers, including the Raspberry Pi Pico W. rshell, thonny and mpremote are all available in the Ubuntu repositories. The Ubuntu graphics stack transition to kms means developers can run Pi-based graphical applications using frameworks like Qt outside of a desktop session and without Pi specific drivers. This complements expanded support for a range of embedded displays for the Raspberry Pi, including the Inky eInk HAT series, Hyperpixel range and the Raspberry Pi Official Touchscreen. [...] All users will benefit from the refinements in GNOME 43, including GTK4 theming for improved performance and consistency. Quick Settings now provide faster access to commonly used options such as wifi, bluetooth, dark mode and power settings.

Project Starline, Google's experimental technology using holographic light field displays to video chat with distant co-workers, is moving out of Google's offices and into some real corporate locations for testing starting this year. From a report: Google's Project Starline tech, announced last year at the company's I/O developer conference, uses giant light field displays and an array of cameras to record and display 3D video between two people at two different remote locations. Starline prototypes are being installed at Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health offices as part of the early-access program, with each company that's part of the program getting two units to test for start.

Google has announced what it's calling "the world's first laptops built for cloud gaming," less than two weeks after announcing plans to shut down Stadia. Forbes reports: Google says the Acer Chromebook 516 GE, ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming Chromebook all have refresh rates of at least 120Hz, displays with up to 1600p resolution, immersive audio and, critically for cloud gaming, WiFi 6 or 6E connectivity. Some models have RGB keyboards too. Subject to availability, you may get a SteelSeries Rival 3 gaming mouse at no extra cost if you pick up one of these Chromebooks. All three laptops were benchmarked by GameBench to ensure that they're capable of running games at 120 frames per second at 1080p resolution. You should get input latency of under 85 ms as well. Google notes that's "console-class" input latency.

[...] Google is bringing some neat cloud gaming features to these Chromebooks. For one thing, the devices will support Xbox Cloud Gaming, Amazon Luna and NVIDIA GeForce Now. In the latter case, Google worked with NVIDIA to ensure these Chromebooks support GeForce Now's highest RTX 3080 tier. That enables cloud gaming at 120 fps at a resolution of 1600p on these systems, which come with the GeForce Now app preinstalled. You'll also be able to install Xbox Cloud Gaming as a web app on your Chromebook. Additionally, these Chromebooks will come with three-month trials for both the GeForce Now RTX 3080 tier and Amazon Luna. Meanwhile, it could be pretty easy for you to find and start playing games on these services through ChromeOS. If you search for a game in the launcher (i.e. through the Everything Button), you'll see where it is available. You'll then be able to load up the game with a single click. To begin with, this feature will be compatible with GeForce Now and the Play Store. "It's good to see that Google hasn't entirely given up on cloud gaming," adds Forbes. "Still, the timing of this announcement comes at a very odd time."