OSnews

If you long for the days of 2011, when 5.3-inch smartphones were enormous outliers rather than the norm, Sony has some news that may interest you: its flagship Xperia Z5 smartphone and its smaller-but-still-high-end sibling the Xperia Z5 Compact are coming to the US on February 7, 2016.Sony smartphones are the only non-Nexus Android phones I'd even remotely consider buying. Even though they, too, suffer from the ridiculous update situation, they are at least trying to sell a nice, compact, high-end Android phone. In fact, I find it kind of remarkable that some version of the Z5 Compact isn't available in a Nexus configuration.

So long as basebands are not audited, and smartphones do not possess IOMMUs and have their operating systems configure them in a way that effectively mitigates the threat, no smartphone can be trusted for the integrity or confidentiality of any data it processes.This being the case, the quest for "secure" phones and "secure" communications applications is rather bizarre. There are only two possible roads to a secure phone: auditing baseband or using an IOMMU. There can't even begin to be a discussion on secure communications applications until the security of the hardware is established.I've written about this a long time ago, and it remains true today. Your phone is not secure, by definition, regardless of platform. Governments should legally demand phone manufacturers to fully publish all source code to the baseband chips they use, or be barred from sales. Mobile phone networks have become a crucial pillar of our society, and as citizens, we have the right to know what's going on in baseband chips.Of course, that's not going to happen - governments benefit from the inherent lack of any form of security in our mobile phone network - but one can dream.

Apple has released a public beta of iOS 9.3. Its major new features:iOS 9.3 is a major update to the iOS 9 operating system, introducing a long list of new features and improvements. iOS 9.3's biggest new feature is Night Shift mode, which is designed to automatically cut down on the amount of blue light an iOS user is exposed to at night by shifting to more yellow tones for the iPhone or iPad's display. With iOS 9.3, there's a number of changes for educational users, and the iPhone is now able to pair with multiple Apple Watches.Of course, "Night Shift", as Apple calls it, is a wholesale copy of f.lux.In any event, Apple also released a public beta of OS X 10.11.4.

Enter the message bots. As 2016 dawns, there's a sense in Silicon Valley that the decades-old fantasy of a true digital assistant is due to roar back into the mainstream. If the trend in past years has been assistants powered by voice - Siri, Alexa, Cortana - in 2016 the focus is shifting to text. And if the bots come, as industry insiders are betting they will, there will be casualties: with artificial intelligence doing the searching for us, Google may see fewer queries. Our AI-powered assistants will manage more and more of our digital activities, eventually diminishing the importance of individual, siloed apps, and the app stores that sell them. Many websites could come to feel as outdated as GeoCities pages - and some companies might ditch them entirely. Nearly all of the information they provide can be fed into a bot and delivered via messaging apps.This seems a bit... Overblown. Bots are going to revolutionise a lot over the coming decades, but messaging bots replacing the point and click interface we've been using ever since Xerox invented it?Much like the death of the PC or Apple, the end of our current HUI metaphor has been predicted more times than I can remember - I don't see how this one is any different.

The first alpha release of Remix OS 2.0 - which we talked about a few days ago - is now officially released. It's clearly an alpha, though, so don't try to use this on any important machines. I have been unable to get it to work - I just get "checking media fail" upon boot - but others are reporting it works, so I guess your mileage may vary.That being said - I'd be a little weary of the EULA. It seems like it contains some regular Chinese boilerplate stuff (other Chinese companies are using the same boilerplate stuff, such as Xiaomi), which sounds incredibly heavy-handed to us. Not sure what to make of this just yet - maybe the company will clarify this one.

The solve for this has been smartwatches designed specifically for women, to varying degrees of offense. Resizing is the first step: a thinner strap, a smaller face, more delicate styling (though, of course, not all women have tiny wrists, the same way that not all men have big wrists). Colorways come next, trading "masculine" black, gray, or brown for "feminine" white, tan, and now-ubiquitous rose gold (seriously, ever since Apple added rose gold to their lineup in September, every damn tech company has followed suit). The final step in making wearable tech for ladies? Throw some jewels on it. Sigh.Technology companies and designing products for women don't go well together, and never have - smartwatches and fitness trackers just highlight this problem like never before.

By now, simply taking over a game and replacing it with a brand new app was beginning to feel a little predictable. So this year, TASBot decided to show off a new skill. At the AGDQ marathon, the bot set out to edit new features onto a game that's still running in active memory. TASBot wanted to be magnanimous with its new capabilities, too, allowing human players (and livestream viewers) the opportunity to edit the game on the fly.But just how did TASBot - and the team of coders behind it - intend to turn an old game of Super Mario World, running on a standard SNES, into a heavily editable game of Super Mario Maker? Luckily, we had a behind-the-scenes invite to the event and the opportunity to find out.I spent most of last week watching AGDQ (and donating, of course), and this particular segment blew my mind.

For the past few weeks, Forbes.com has been forcing visitors to disable ad blockers if they want to read its content. Visitors to the site with Adblock or uBlock enabled are told they must disable it if they wish to see any Forbes content. Thanks to Forbes' interstitial ad and quote of the day, Google caching doesn't capture data properly, either.What sets Forbes apart, in this case, is that it didn't just force visitors to disable ad blocking - it actively served them malware as soon as they did. Details were captured by security researcher Brian Baskin, who screenshotted the process.There are no words for this level of stupidity.

Linux 4.4 has been released This release adds support for 3D support in virtual GPU driver, which allows 3D hardware-accelerated graphics in virtualization guests; loop device support for Direct I/O and Asynchronous I/O, which saves memory and increases performance; support for Open-channel SSDs, which are devices that share the responsibility of the Flash Translation Layer with the operating system; the TCP listener handling is completely lockless and allows for faster and more scalable TCP servers; journalled RAID5 in the MD layer which fixes the RAID write hole; eBPF programs can now be run by unprivileged users, and perf has added support for eBPF programs aswell; a new mlock2() syscall that allows users to request memory to be locked on page fault; and block polling support.There are also new drivers and many other small improvements. Here is the full list of changes.

It's bittersweet news for die-hard BlackBerry fans, a shrinking, but fiercely loyal group. Yes, BlackBerry will continue to exist, but won't offer any phones running on its own BlackBerry 10 software. Still, future Android BlackBerry devices means more choice besides the usual mix of Samsung, LG or HTC Android phones.Something about a tree falling in a forest, but that might be a bit cruel.

There are several acknowledged rules on the Internet. Rule Zero, translated into more appropriate language,of course, is don't commit violence against a cat. Rule One ought to be don't mess with the EFF.The EFF is one of those few organisations you can just always trust to have your best interests at heart. Their track record is impeccable, and their causes always just.Don't mess with the EFF.

Speaking of Cyanogen OS:Following the Cyanogen OS 12.11 update for the OnePlus One, you may have noticed something worse than the automatic inclusion of Cortana. Now upon selecting a file without a set default application, you will see adverts for Microsoft apps and services on the "open with" menu.I feel like a broken record player at this point, but don't trust these guys. Selling out to Microsoft has never done anyone any good.

As promised, Cyanogen has released an update to Cyanogen OS (which is not CyanogenMod) that integrates Cortana into their Android offering.In the Cyanogen OS 12.1.1 update, we are excited to introduce Microsoft Cortana. What makes this such an exciting partnership is that by having Cortana's voice command capability deeply integrated into the Cyanogen ecosystem, we're opening the door to future capabilities that don't currently exist.So, they're going to "take Android away from Google", and then give it to Microsoft? This Microsoft?OK.Look - like Microsoft, Google collects data. A lot of it. We all know it, and at least all of us, OSNews readers, make a conscious choice to use Android anyway. While I don't trust Google in any way, there's at least the comfort that they are probably the most closely monitored company when it comes to privacy, and there's little to no risk of the company folding and being up for grabs - meaning, your data will remain within Google, and won't end up in somebody else's, less trustworthy hands just because they happened to buy Google.Cyanogen Inc., however, is a whole different ballgame. This is a start-up funded by venture capitalists who are clearly looking for a quick buck. They're making a lot of grandiose claims and a ton of ruckus, and as I've said before, I give them a few years before they're acquired by someone else - at which point your data could end up anywhere, completely beyond your control, with little to no oversight.Venture capitalists - and by extension, those who depend on them - have no interest in you. You are irrelevant. All they care about is cashing in on their investments as soon as possible, everything else be damned.Don't buy into Cyanogen. Just don't.

Jide Technology has released Remix OS 2.0 as a free download available on January 12th designed to run on the majority of Intel and AMD devices such as PC and Mac. The company which was founded by three ex-Google employees has developed the OS thanks to a partnership with the Android-x86 project enabling it to run on almost any PC.This is pretty much what Android on desktop and laptops - what Google itself is currently working on - is going to look like. It's designed first and foremost for Jide's own devices, but starting 12 January it'll also be available for select generic x86 devices, including some Macs. There's no proper up-to-date compatibility list as far as I can tell, so we'll have to wait and see just how useful it can be.It looks quite interesting, and the fact that it's run by former Google employees gives some hope regarding its longevity and legitimacy. That being said, with Google itself working on bringing Android to desktops and laptops, you have to wonder how much longer Jide can maintain itself.

So, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of my favourite games of all time, and it's also generally considered to be one of the best games ever made. And, as with all games, people 'speedrun' this game, which means trying to beat the game as fast as is humanly possible. There are several categories, each with certain rules and things that are and are not allowed.This particular speedrun of Symphony Of The Night by Cosmo takes this concept to a whole new level. The end time of 7 minutes and 52 seconds is mind-blowing enough, but how he actually gets there is just utterly insane. Basically, he procures a very specific set of items in his inventory, and then proceeds to manipulate the items in his inventory in a extremely specific way, within very specific fractions of seconds of game-time, to use the sorting mechanism of the inventory to manipulate the assembly code in memory to make the game finish itself. All this, on the actual console itself, without tools, without additional software, without emulators, without anything.The actual science or coding behind this technique was discovered and developed by a person named Sockfolder, and he put up a 40-minute stream to explain in detail what's going on, with the contents of memory on the side of the screen so you can see exactly what's happening. It's mesmerising (even though I don't fully understand what's going on).While the actual coding part of it can be discovered and explored in relative comfort of an emulator and other tools, actually pulling this off 'live', with just the tools at the disposal of any regular player, is absolutely amazing. This kind of stuff sits at the very fringes of programming, and I find it incredibly impressive.

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is going on right now, but unless you're interested in Samsung or LG smart fridges, generic smartphones from generic vendors, or smartwatches nobody will remember or care about two weeks from now, it's kind of hard to find decent news among the cavalcade of irrelevance.Well, there's this - an official statement from Hyperion, the developer of AmigaOS 4, regarding the source code leak late last year.The days between last Christmas and New Year were actually clouded by the sad fact that the source code of AmigaOS 3.1 and additional content dating back to 1994 was published and widely spread without permission of the rights-holder. Note that no code of AmigaOS 4.x was released or distributed.[...]While this would be already more than enough of a reason to care about the unauthorised disclosure and distribution, it is also the very same settlement agreement which made all of this possible in the first place, which contractually requires Hyperion to enforce and protect any intellectual property rights associated with AmigaOS including the AmigaOS 3.1 source-code.So yeah, Hyperion is obligated to combat this source code leak, but as we all know - this is the internet. It's out there now, and it's not going anywhere any time soon.

The Dutch government has formally opposed the introduction of backdoors in encryption products.A government position paper, published by the Ministry of Security and Justice on Monday and signed by the security and business ministers, concludes that "the government believes that it is currently not appropriate to adopt restrictive legal measures against the development, availability and use of encryption within the Netherlands."The conclusion comes at the end of a five-page run-through of the arguments for greater encryption and the counter-arguments for allowing the authorities access to the information.The word "currently" worries me, but this is good news.

Microkernel hatred is a peculiar phenomenon. Sheltered users who have never had any background in much beyond Windows and some flavor of free monolithic Unix, will, despite a general apathy or ignorance in the relevant subjects, have strong opinions on the allegedly dreadful performance and impracticality of "icrokernels", however they define the term (and we shall see that a lot of people have some baffling impressions of what a microkernel is supposed to be). Quite often, these negative views will be a result of various remarks made by Linus Torvalds and a general hero worship of his character, a misrepresentation of an old Usenet flame war between AST and Torvalds that was somehow "won" and which supposedly proved that microkernels are nothing but a toy of ivory tower academics, or a rehash of quarter century-old benchmarks on CMU's Mach that were unfavorable. The presence of Linus' character in many of this is no coincidence. It strikes me that anti-microkernel sentiment most vocally originates as a sort of tribal affiliation mechanism by Linux users to ward off insecurity.In any event, this article will be a concise tour of microkernel myths and misconceptions throughout the ages.I wouldn't exactly call this article "concise", but it's definitely filled with valuable technical information.

Let me start by saying that beautiful websites come in all sizes and page weights. I love big websites packed with images. I love high-resolution video. I love sprawling Javascript experiments or well-designed web apps.This talk isn't about any of those. It's about mostly-text sites that, for unfathomable reasons, are growing bigger with every passing year.While I'll be using examples to keep the talk from getting too abstract, I'm not here to shame anyone, except some companies (Medium) that should know better and are intentionally breaking the web.This is an amazing and hilarious read we can all agree with it. I doubt there's going to be any pointless bickering over this one.

The general plan for the OS is to create a micro-kernel based design with sufficient drivers that a basic user-mode interface can be created. The user-mode interface will include a basic tablet or laptop user interface with the ability to start user mode applications. The final goal is to develop a web-browser application to demonstrate the power of the OS.FlingOS is an educational operating system designed to aid in teaching and learning low-level operating system programming.

With a heavy heart Debian mourns the passing of Ian Murdock, stalwart proponent of Free Open Source Software, Father, Son, and the 'ian' in Debian.Ian started the Debian project in August of 1993, releasing the first versions of Debian later that same year. Debian would go on to become the world's Universal Operating System, running on everything from embedded devices to the space station.Ian's sharp focus was on creating a Distribution and community culture that did the right thing, be it ethically, or technically. Releases went out when they were ready, and the project's staunch stance on Software Freedom are the gold standards in the Free and Open Source world.Debian - or anything Debian-based - is my distribution of choice, and there's no denying just how much Debian has contributed to the Linux world.My thoughts are with his family and friends.

Google is replacing the Java application programming interfaces (APIs) in Android with OpenJDK, the open source version of Oracle's Java Development Kit (JDK). The news first came by a "mysterious Android codebase commit" from last month submitted to Hacker News. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that Android N will rely solely on OpenJDK, rather Androidâs own version of the Java APIs."As an open-source platform, Android is built upon the collaboration of the open-source community," a Google spokesperson told VentureBeat. "In our upcoming release of Android, we plan to move Androidâs Java language libraries to an OpenJDK-based approach, creating a common code base for developers to build apps and services. Google has long worked with and contributed to the OpenJDK community, and we look forward to making even more contributions to the OpenJDK project in the future."If this is what it takes to get those Oracle slimebags off Android's back, so be it.

Generation Amiga has reported today a tweet from Hacker Fantastic saying that the Amiga OS source has been leaked, including both Kickstart and Workbench. Looking at the @hackerfantastic's tweet, there is another user with the handle @TheWack0lian that offers a link to download the OS in a 130MB tar file which expands to 540MB of source code.[...]Apparently the source code is really related to Amiga OS. The tar file name refers to OS 3.1 but folders from the source code refers to version 4, which could mean the source code is pretty much up to date.From what I can gather, it's not fully 100% complete, but it's still a pretty significant leak. With the number of times this software has changed hands, it's remarkable it's taken this long.

In both cases, what is unusual for Microsoft is the positivity the gizmos have generated. Fair or not (and I'd argue probably not), Microsoft isn't expected to blaze new trails and develop hot new products that have the potential to create new markets or shake up existing ones. We know Microsoft's history - too early with tablets, too early with smartphones, too early with wearables - and this generates a degree of skepticism around what it does. But with HoloLens and Surface Book, much of that cynicism seems to have evaporated.Desktop operating systems (Windows, Linux, OS X - all of them) are in a pretty piss-poor state right now for various different reasons, and in the case of Windows, I find this truly sad because Microsoft seems to be doing some really cool stuff in the laptop and tablet front. Sadly, the software just isn't up to par.Much like the Apple, we can hope 2016 brings some major improvements, but considering Microsoft's endless promises and failures to deliver, I'm not holding my breath.

All of Apple's products this year were just fine. You could settle yourself totally within the Apple ecosystem and use Apple Music and Apple News on your iPhone while taking Live Photos and you would be just fine. You wouldn't have the best time, but you wouldn't have the worst one, either. It would just be fine.And that's really the issue. We're not used to Apple being just fine. We're used to Apple being wildly better than the competition, or sometimes much worse, but always being ahead of the curve on some significant axis. But what we got in 2015 was an Apple that released more products than ever, all of which felt incomplete in extremely meaningful ways - ways that meant that their products were just fine, and often just the same as everyone else's.In defense of Apple, the company did put out a significant number of new platforms this year. Let's see if they manage to improve these clearly beta platforms in 2016.

Google's next move for Glass is clearly into the enterprise, and the device that Google is using to make this move, appropriately dubbed "Enterprise Edition," has improved internal hardware, and a new look built around a button-and-hinge system made for working environments. As you can tell, the device doesn't look all too different than the previous Google Glass: Explorer Edition, but foldability was one of the previous versionâs most-requested features - and now it's part of the design.As I said earlier, this just makes sense.

Currently, standards are advancing rapidly in the area of mobile Web applications as part of the emerging HTML5 platform. The goal, backed strongly by Google and Mozilla, is for websites to be able to do anything that native apps can. If this happens, native apps may no longer be necessary or desirable - right? Would the considerable advantages of the mobile Web (its near-zero footprint, updates performed on the server, and support for all platforms) convince developers and users to target the Web instead of the iPhone and Android? And would Apple allow this to happen?This utopian dream has existed in one form or another for at least two decades now, and I wonder if we'll ever get there. It'd be nice to be freed from the clutches of Google Play and the App Store, but it's a long way off, still.

Quartz looks back at Apple's 2015.This year, CEO Tim Cook did a lot of interviews by Apple standards, from this month's "60 Minutes" episode to 20 minutes with BuzzFeed in the back seat of a Cadillac Escalade. He "crashed" a coding party - conveniently while a Mashable editor was in attendance - and "wrote a message" to CNBC's Jim Cramer. You might even say he likes the attention.Meanwhile, Jony Ive, Apple's chief design officer, participated in an FT profile and received the New Yorker treatment earlier this year, inviting a journalist into his Bentley. To the media, a "rare look inside Jony Ive's design lab" seems to be the prized new "rare look inside North Korea." (And similarly staged.)This PR campaign by Apple seems designed to make the company look more open and inviting, but in the end it just makes it all look fake and staged - which reflects incredibly badly on the media outlets participating in these PR events. For a company and accompanying fanbase riling so heavily against advertising, Apple sure does a lot of advertising thinly veiled as actual "reports" or "news stories".But hey, people eat it up, so I can't blame either the advertiser or the willing media participant.

So uh, look up from your Christmas dinner for a second, because Steam is having a major security meltdown at the moment.It's the middle of Steam's big winter sale, which means a huge number of people are browsing, buying, and playing games right now on the platform. Some of them, however, seem to have tripped into a major security hole. A variety of users on Twitter, NeoGAF, and Reddit have noted that they can see other users' account information - including addresses and credit card data - instead of their own details.From what I can gather online, users would occasionally be logged into not just their own accounts, but also those of others, including being able to see their information. The general consensus seems to be that you couldn't actually abuse said credit card information (you only have the last two digits and you still need the security code to actually buy stuff), but people who use PayPal to pay on Steam might not be safe.Steam's store has been completely shut down, but you can still play online. Major security problem here, and it seems to be related to caching, although there's no official word on that.See? This is what I get for buying an Apple Watch. I upset the balance.

Netflix is working on a new video compression strategy, and they've published a very detailed blog post about it.We've spent years developing an approach, called per-title encoding, where we run analysis on an individual title to determine the optimal encoding recipe based on its complexity. Imagine having very involved action scenes that need more bits to encapsulate the information versus unchanging landscape scenes or animation that need less. This allows us to deliver the same or better experience while using less bandwidth, which will be particularly important in lower bandwidth countries and as we expand to places where video viewing often happens on mobile networks.The technical details go way over my head, but the basic premise seems to make sense to a layman such as I.

It's the end of 2015, and one fact about the internet is quickly becoming clear this year: Americans' freedom to access the open internet is rapidly dissolving.Broadband access is declining, data caps are becoming commonplace, surveillance is increasing, and encryption is under attack.This is not merely my opinion. The evidence is everywhere; the walls are closing in from all sides. The net neutrality victory of early this year has rapidly been tempered by the fact that net neutrality doesn't matter if you don't have solid access to said 'net.A lot is going to depend on whatever president the American public elects next year. All Republicans are obviously off the table when it comes to an open and free internet, and Clinton, too, considers encryption a problem that needs to be addressed (i.e., broken, users be damned).I don't want to do any endorsements, but I think y'all can do the math. Make it happen, America.

Linux Mint 17.3 is the final Mint 17 release and should put to rest any worries about Mint's plan to stick with Ubuntu LTS releases for its base. Mint has done what it set up to do, namely improve the Cinnamon desktop to the point that it not only matches, but in many places far exceeds the user experience found in other options like GNOME, and especially, Unity.Indeed, it's hard to look at Mint 17.3 without comparing it to its upstream base. While Mint has been continually working hard on the desktop and cranking out release after release, Ubuntu has stagnated. If Ubuntu wants to leapfrog past some of its pain points, its developers would do well to look downstream. Mint's package management tools are simpler, more comprehensive, and easier to use than anything Ubuntu offers. Mint also manages to do all this without anything even remotely close to the resources Ubuntu enjoys.

The Lumia 950 XL simply isn't for me or the vast majority of smartphone users out there. I use Windows 10 on a daily basis on a PC, but the experience on mobile is just lacking. Microsoft has done an excellent job on its apps for other platforms, and my iPhone home screen is full of them. The Lumia 950 XL needed something exciting and unique to convince me to switch back, but it failed.That might change if a rumored Surface Phone arrives next year, but right now it's the same old waiting game for Windows on phones. A year ago I was tired of waiting, and today nothing feels like it has changed. Windows 10 papers over the cracks, but unless developers buy into Microsoft's vision of universal apps then it won't change much. More and more high-profile apps are disappearing from Windows Phone, and the Lumia 950 XL won't help bring them back.When your flagship Windows Phone fails to entice even Microsoft enthusiasts, you know you've got serious problems. Love the money quote: "If you're someone that believes Windows Phone is dead, this is the casket youâd bury it in."Damn that's cold.

On Thursday, tech giant Juniper Networks revealed in a startling announcement that it had found "unauthorized" code embedded in an operating system running on some of its firewalls.The code, which appears to have been in multiple versions of the company's ScreenOS software going back to at least August 2012, would have allowed attackers to take complete control of Juniper NetScreen firewalls running the affected software. It also would allow attackers, if they had ample resources and skills, to separately decrypt encrypted traffic running through the Virtual Private Network, or VPN, on the firewalls.[...]The security community is particularly alarmed because at least one of the backdoors appears to be the work of a sophisticated nation-state attacker.Merry Christmas, everybody.

Android is the most popular mobile OS on the planet, and Google has brought the OS to cars, watches, and televisions. And, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Google will soon be bringing Android to yet another form factor: desktop and laptop computers. Re-architecting Android for a mouse and keyboard is going to require major changes to the smartphone operating system, but Android is actually much farther along that path today than most people realize.It really is - but there's a definitive oddness about it, though. In any event, Google has already confirmed it's working on bringing multiwindow to Android, and if the company is really serious about putting Android on actual laptops and desktops, it's going to have to be more than just the kind of My First Multitasking Windows 8's Metro had (implemented 1:1 in iOS 9). It's going to have to be the real deal, with windows that can be moved around, resized, stacked, etc. - all the kinds of things you'd expect from any other desktop operating system.I think the biggest problem they're going to run into is the black bar at the bottom of the screen, housing the back/home/windows button. Unless they can come up with a way to logically let the back button handle multiple activity stacks, I would suggest getting rid of the bar entirely, or just converting it into an all-out taskbar. They obviously can't have that black bar on 23" desktop displays or whatever.Android 7 is going to be very interesting!

Now, it is my pleasure to share you really good news: we're back from the death valley! We have just finished our latest financing round and secured solid new financing to the company. This investment enables the continuation of Sailfish OS development, the community activities and other company operations. Itâs clear that this recent struggle hit us hard and left some battle wounds but most importantly this means that the development and life of Sailfish OS will continue strong. This alone is worth a celebration!Whether this is just a stay or an actual solution remains to be seen, but I'm skeptical.

Choice. After all the software improvements, promotional offers and good intentions, 'choice' is the big factor Microsoft forgot to consider with Windows 10. Falling adoption rates have seen the company's initial smugness evolve into incredulity and increasingly dirty tactics and now Microsoft appears to have forgotten about respecting choice entirely because life for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users is about to get a lot worse...Over the last week Microsoft has begun to roll out a combination of highly questionable changes to the billion+ users of Windows 7 and Windows 8 and these efforts will intensify into early 2016.Much like Apple's recent sleazy tactics of shoving ads into every corner of its operating system to try and suck you deeper and deeper into their labyrinth of lock-in products and services, Microsoft is trying very hard to forcefully push its users to upgrade to Windows 10 - and it's not eschewing any tactics, no matter how dirty.The development of operating systems seems to have stagnated considerably, meaning new operating system releases don't really contain any standout features that draw large masses of users to upgrade. In addition, the differences between the operating systems are pretty moot (especially OS X vs. Windows or iOS vs. Android) these days, and there's really no clear benefit choosing one over the other.It should be no surprise, then, that operating system peddlers are exploring other tactics to retain your business.

At the end of 2000 I watched some GEOS-pages and asked myself, why not making such a system on CPC, too. Most CPCs have 128K (most C64 only have 64K), a screen-resolution of 320x200 with 4 colours (C64 only has 2 colours for each 8x8 area in 320x200) and some more advantages. So the idea of the SymbOS-Project was born. SymbOS stands for "SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating System". SymbOS should become a demonstration, what could be possible on CPC since the last 20 years. I want to give everything to SymbOS what a modern OS needs. Real preemptive Multitasking, a dynamic memory-management for up to 576K and more and a totaly MS-Windows-like GUI are the three most important things.Impressive project, and lovely retro '90s website.

AMD's position in the graphics market continues to be a tricky one. Although the company has important design wins in the console space - both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are built around AMD CPUs with integrated AMD GPUs - its position in the PC space is a little more precarious. Nvidia currently has the outright performance lead, and perhaps more problematically, many games are to a greater or lesser extent optimized for Nvidia GPUs. One of the chief culprits here is Nvidia's GameWorks software, a proprietary library of useful tools for game development - things like realistic hair and shadows, and physics processing for destructible environments - that is optimized for Nvidia's cards. When GameWorks games are played on AMD systems, they can often do so with reduced performance or graphical quality.To combat this, AMD is today announcing GPUOpen, a comparable set of tools to GameWorks. As the name would suggest, however, there's a key difference between GPUOpen and GameWorks: GPUOpen will, when it is published in January, be open source. AMD will use the permissive MIT license, allowing GPUOpen code to be used without any practical restriction in both open and closed source applications, and will publish all code on GitHub.Great move by AMD, and definitely a step up from Nvidia's questionable closed tactics that only seem to harm users. HotHardware has more information on AMD's extensive plans.

The makers of MacKeeper - a much-maligned software utility many consider to be little more than scareware that targets Mac users - have acknowledged a breach that exposed the usernames, passwords and other information on more than 13 million customers and, er... Users. Perhaps more interestingly, the guy who found and reported the breach doesn't even own a Mac, and discovered the data trove merely by browsing Shodan - a specialized search engine that looks for and indexes virtually anything that gets connected to the Internet.The most surprising news here is that apparently at least 13 million Mac users have this piece of scamware installed. You know, it's almost as if Mac users are not the special flower children some people would like us to believe, and are just as susceptible to social engineering and lapses in judgment as anyone else.Who knew, right?

Qubes OS, the security-focused operating system that Edward Snowden said in November he was "really excited" about, announced this week that laptop maker Purism will ship their privacy-focused Librem 13 notebook with Qubes pre-installed.Built on a security-hardened version of the Xen hypervisor, Qubes protects users by allowing them to partition their digital lives into virtual machines. Rather than focus solely on security by correctness, or hide behind security by obscurity, Qubes implements security by isolation - the OS assumes that the device will eventually be breached, and compartmentalises all of its various subsystems to prevent an attacker from gaining full control of the device. Qubes supports Fedora and Debian Linux VMs, and Windows 7 VMs.Purism is also aiming to eventually have a completely open laptop - top to bottom - but they're not quite there just yet (e.g. BIOS is still a major issue).

Commander Keen is an episodic video game developed by id Software in the early 1990s. The series focuses on the adventures of Billy Blaze, an 8-year-old boy who travels through space and assumes the secret identity of "Commander Keen". The series was successful at replicating the side-scrolling action of the Nintendo Entertainment System Super Mario Bros. games in DOS. The cartoon-style platform games are notable for their pioneering use of EGA graphics and shareware distribution, and they were some of the first games by id Software (who went on to later develop Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake). The games were also exciting to the PC gaming community of the time because of John D. Carmack's smooth-scrolling graphics game engine, which first allowed smooth side scrollers on PC by only redrawing the elements of the screen that actually changed frame to frame.Today is Commander Keen's 25th birthday. Keen was one of the very first games I ever played, and everybody I knew at the time was into Keen as well. We swapped floppies around with Keen on them, and I must've finished many of the episodes countless times. Commander Keen is part of my childhood, and a landmark in (PC) gaming.In honour of Keen's 25th birthday, John Romero published a video today, in which he shows id Software's "port" (reverse engineering is probably more accurate) of Super Mario Bros. 3 to the PC. It was created without Nintendo's consent, and then sent to Nintendo for evaluation. The company had no interest in it, but the knowledge gained would come to use for Keen.Fascinating.

Apple is beginning to push fullscreen pop-up ads for the iPhone 6s to people opening the App Store app on some older iPhone models, according to a rush of user complaints.[...]Apple has previously marketed new devices through things like App Store banners and collections, but this is the first time Apple has temporarily prevented people from using an app simply for the sake of marketing - at least when excluding the Apple Music sign-up screen seen after launching the iOS Music app for the first time.I got the ad as well, but on my iPhone 6S, which makes even less sense. This is just sleazy and scummy.Apple's been pushing a lot of sleazy advertisements into iOS lately, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. The company that keeps spouting the "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" nonsense, is the one pushing sleazy advertisements into their mobile operating system, while Google, the advertising company, is not.

I have a Samsung RF4289HARS refrigerator. The Google calendar app on it has been working perfectly since I purchased the refrigerator August 2012. However, with the latest changes in Google Calendar API, I can no longer sign in to my calendar [scroll to top; I have no idea where the permalink is in this horrible UI]. I receive a message stating "Please check your email in Google Calendar website". I can sign in fine on my home PC and have no problem seeing the calendar on my phone. Perhaps this is a Samsung issue, but I thought I would try here first. Has anyone else experienced this problem and what was the solution?Pretty sure this is in the Book of Revelation somewhere.

On December 8, 2015, Microsoft released Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile updates on a global scale testing the Windows as a Service (WaaS) model. Besides the syncing of cumulative OS updates between desktop and phone, the event revealed that carriers seem to be sidelined. Here is why that is and what changed between Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 Mobile.Essentially, Microsoft seems to have "blackboxed" the radio stack, so that it can push updates without affecting it. Very, very nice.

It appears that the Pixel C was planned as launch hardware for a new, all-touch version of Chrome OS which at some point got canceled - necessitating a switch to Android. The story is a lot more complicated than that, though. What follows is the best timeline we could piece together showing the Pixel C's troubled development history.The launch of the Pixel C is baffling. Not only is it lacking features that Android needs to work well on the device, it's also got numerous bugs, indicating the Android port was done in a rush. I just don't understand why Google didn't just wait with this device until Android 6+1 with multiwindow was done. Now they've severely blemished their Pixel name.

An early preview of the new Android Emulator is now available to try out. As a part of Android Studio 2.0, the latest version of the Android Emulator can help you test your app on a wide range of screens size and configurations beyond the physical Android hardware you use to test.Moreover, using the official Android emulator enables you to test with latest Android versions.Google claims this new version contains serious performance improvements - which were sorely, badly needed - and it sports a brand new interface.

Google's Chromebooks have overtaken Apple products as the most popular devices in American classrooms, but Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company will not be following the search giant's approach to the education market, which has been a stronghold for Apple since the early days of the Mac."Assessments donât create learning," Cook said in an interview with BuzzFeed News Wednesday, calling the cheap laptops that have proliferated through American classrooms mere âtest machines."ChromeBooks are pushing Apple further and further away in education, and Google claims that at the end of 2015, there will be more ChromeBooks in US schools than all other devices combined. This is clearly very frustrating for Apple, who always had a strong foothold in education. However, if Tim Cook really thinks ChromeBooks are popular because of testing or their price, he's delusional.One of the primary reasons he fails to mention: ChromeBooks are infinitely easier to manage than iPads. Virtually every teacher or school employee I've ever heard talking about this was frustrated with the lack of proper centralised management for iPads, whereas ChromeBooks are dead easy to manage, control, and replace. Combined with their low cost and real keyboard, any school worth its salt would choose ChromeBooks.Instead of attacking the competition who seems to understand education better than you do, Mr. Cook, you might want to focus on, you know, creating a good product for education.

The Pebble Time Kickstarter project brought more than just color, voice, and ergonomic design to our family of smartwatches. The campaign also introduced a focused and delightful new operating system with Pebble Firmware 3.0. Featuring the timeline interface to organize your past, present, and future, 3.0 is all about delivering the best ways to get things done from your wrist.During the campaign, we promised to bring support for Pebble Time's 3.0 operating system to the rest of our lineup as well. We're happy to announce that timeline, unlimited apps, and more are on their way to Pebble Classic and Pebble Steel this month.I'm still not entirely used to watches being a playground for operating systems now.

In their latest article, the developers of the Genode OS Framework document the long-winded way to their new ARM TrustZone demo on the USB Armory - an open source flash drive sized computer. This undertaking was motivated by the prospect to put Linux, which normally runs on the USB Armory, under the supervision of a significantly less complex Genode hypervisor. This construction enables shielding sensitive information like cryptographic keys from Linux by exposing them to Genode only and thereby drastically reduces the attack surface.The article illustrates how the TrustZone technology is used to isolate Genode from Linux without compromising the rich feature set of Linux, and how both worlds can safely communicate with each other. Finally, the article provides you with all tools and information for easily bringing the demo to your own USB Armory.