Quote:For the last couple of years, it’s been possible to buy an ARM PC that runs Windows, with an average user experience that ranges from “acceptable” to “lousy,” depending on what kind of work you need to do with your PC.

Some of the problems Windows 10 on ARM is grappling with today are the same issues Windows RT suffered from in 2012. While Windows on ARM  in 2020 has the x86 emulation capabilities that Windows RT lacked, the feature has been subject to certain restrictions regarding software support. Only 32-bit applications have been supported — and not all of them. Emulated 32-bit gaming is a very hit and miss affair, as this post from Reddit shows.

Now, however, some of these restrictions are going away. In a recent blog post, Microsoft said future versions of Microsoft Edge will use less battery, and that the company is building a native Teams client optimized for Windows on ARM. Finally, the company writes: “We will also expand support for running x64 apps, with x64 emulation starting to roll out to the Windows Insider Program in November.”
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In order to make 64-bit Windows on ARM an attractive prospect, Microsoft needs to deliver four specific things:

Native Apps: One of the ways to make 64-bit x86 emulation more attractive is to reassure people they’ll hardly ever need to use it. This may require straight-up paying the Top 500 most-commonly installed PC app vendors to port their software. x86 has a four-decade lead on ARM when it comes to the total number of native applications, and throwing some cash at this problem is the most straightforward way to make it go away.

Low-Level Driver and API Support: API support can overlap with app support depending on the context, but I decided to group it up with drivers for thematic purposes. The shift to supporting 64-bit x86 applications should include better driver support at every level, from anti-cheat software to accessories and peripherals. One of Microsoft’s biggest goals with the next version of Windows on ARM systems should be to eliminate as many low-level snags and “gotchas” as is humanly possible. Find a way to extend gaming support to a version of OpenGL written after the Clinton Administration.

Faster SoCs: It’s not enough to improve the software side of the equation — the hardware inside these systems needs to come up a few notches as well. This is the Achilles heel of emulation; it’s much harder to improve performance when simultaneously performing code translation. This pressure should reduce as more native applications and better low-level driver and API support become available.

Smooth performance: Several reviews of the Surface Pro X note that the unit often stutters or performs erratically when emulating x86. It’s worth making tasks take slightly longer if the result is a smoother end-user experience. Apps that stutter or hang erratically are much more difficult to navigate than apps that respond at slower but more consistent rates. Faster SoCs, as mentioned above, will help resolve these issues.

How Microsoft responds to the above list will shape the conflict between x86 and ARM in the traditional desktop/laptop space. If the company begins aggressively working to make ARM a full partner in terms of overall software availability, DirectX support, and future game releases, it’s going to bring x86 into direct conflict with ARM in relatively short order. This would be especially true if Nvidia were to use its ARM ownership to build CPU cores specifically intended to challenge Intel and AMD in their core spaces.

Trends like this are why I’ve said we’re looking at the most interesting CPU market in decades. How Microsoft treats ARM will shape the x86-versus-ARM competition. So will Nvidia’s decisions about how to best-leverage its new IP. RISC-V is continuing to gain steam. As for these Windows on ARM systems, Microsoft has said it’s working with Acer, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and its own Surface division to bring Windows 10 on ARM to customers.

Quote:Microsoft has announced that they will be pushing x64 app support on their Windows 10 on Arm operating system. This is part of a move by Microsoft to mainstream adoption of their OS (and related services) on Arm-based platforms, ensuring that the company has a foothold in that market - especially as competition between Arm and x86-x64 architectures increases further and reaches more and more areas. Whereas before, Arm was relegated to low-power, relatively low performance designs, recent years have seen Arm's design performance (and philosophy) looking for higher performance use-cases both in the consumer and server/supercomputing spaces. One needs not look further than NVIDIA's plans to acquire Arm to see how much stock is being placed in Arm's future,
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Adding x64 support to Windows on Arm is arguably more important than the base x86 support, though one couldn't live without the other. As more and more applications have been built from the ground-up on x64 due to increased requirements and the democratization of RAM memory (among other factors), x64 support may finally bring Windows on Arm to a feature-level parity with Windows 10 on x86-64 - and bring the fight against Apple's creator ecosystem that encompasses that firm's Macs through iPads and iPhones.

Quote:Security researchers from Pen Test Partners have found a privilege escalation vulnerability in the Lenovo Solution Centre (LSC) utility that's found on the majority of Lenovo’s Windows laptops. The bug could have allowed anyone with any sort of local or remote access to the machines to gain administrator privileges and take over the systems.
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According to the PTP researchers, when they first reported the vulnerability to Lenovo, the company took the strange action of backdating the end-of-life (EOL) for the LSC tool. The EOL was initially listed as November 30, 2018, but then Lenovo moved it to April 2018, which was right after the PTP researchers revealed the bug to Lenovo.

TheRegister asked Lenovo why it was changing the EOL date "to make it look like they were releasing updates for a product they had already EOL'd."The company’s statement essentially confirmed that Lenovo was interested in making it look like they were updating a product that supposedly had already lost support:

"It’s often the case for applications that reach end of support that we continue to update the applications as we transition to new offerings is to ensure customers that have not transitioned, or choose not to, still have a minimal level of support, a practice that is not uncommon in the industry.”

This isn’t the first time Lenovo has been caught either with spy tools or broken security on its laptops. It seems the company hasn’t improved all that much since the Superfish scandal broke out.

Quote:Speaking to the assembled throngs at an Israel Security conference, a Microsoft engineer Matt Miller said that memory safety bugs happen when software, accidentally or intentionally, accesses system memory in a way that exceeds its allocated size and memory addresses.

He said that over the the last 12 years, around 70 percent of all Microsoft patches were fixes for memory safety bugs.

The reason for this high percentage is because Windows has been written mostly in C and C++, two "memory-unsafe" programming languages that allow developers fine-grained control of the memory addresses where their code can be executed.

Quote:This somewhat square banner is positioned at the right-center corner of the screen, with a handy "turn off this picture press ctrl+alt+F" text. When GPU Tweak II is closed (background process killed), the overlay disappears. The banner itself markets the company's latest RTX 20-series graphics cards. "PurpleSquash640" captioned this banner "wtf?" in their screenshot, and we can't disagree with that sentiment. This is the first among many questionable GPDR-teasing practices by ASUS in recent times, including unsolicited injection of files to Windows System32 folder by its latest motherboards.

Quote:Facebook is no stranger to data privacy scandals. Last year, it was revealed that the data of over 87 million Facebook users was accessed by third-parties, for which the company received a lot of flak. Now, a new report has emerged claiming that Facebook paid people - including teenagers - on a monthly basis in order to mine their device data.

The disturbing revelation was made by TechCrunch, which extensively detailed how Facebook was paying people aged 13-35 up to $20 per month so that their devices could be mined. The report claims that this data was gathered using a "Facebook Research" VPN - for Android and iOS - that could be downloaded through beta testing services rather than the respective mobile platform's app stores - where this app probably wouldn't have been allowed. The app in question gave access to the user's network traffic, which the firm utilized to "gather data on usage habits".
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Despite its initial defensive stance, it appears that faced with facts and backlash, Facebook has started backtracking, announcing that it is shutting down the iOS version of Project Atlas. However, no such claim has been made regarding the Android version of the application. It will be quite interesting to see how Facebook defends this new controversy, given the shady tactics it employed in order to get the app into the hands of as many customers as it could, even minors.

Quote:What springs to mind when I say "MIDI," gerbils? Is it perhaps thoughts of an old Gravis Ultrasound or Sound Blaster AWE? Expensive Roland synthesis hardware? Perhaps you're actually a musician who still uses the Musical Instrument Digital Interface to this day. Despite being virtually unchanged since its release in 1983, MIDI remains by far the most popular digital interface for musicians. At the 2019 National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM)show, the MIDI Manufacturers Association (MMA) just announced that it is in the preliminary prototyping phase of drafting the MIDI 2.0 standard.

Quote:Here's what the Ghostery ad blocking company said in a statement, as per Gizmodo this week:

“This would basically mean that Google is destroying ad blocking and privacy protection as we know it. They pretend to do this for the sake of privacy and browser performance; however, in reality, users would be left with only very limited ways to prevent third parties from intercepting their surfing behavior or to get rid of unwanted content.”
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Losing tools like these would be a huge blow to online privacy. Countless trackers monitor browsing activity so it can be sold to the highest bidder. Most of these trackers are invisible, and there's no way to stop most of them from working unless you use some form of automated ad blocking tool. If uBO's download figures are any indicator, millions of people are doing just that.
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You can probably see where this is going. Google is the exception to the rule because it makes the browser people use to view the websites on which its ads are displayed. Well, actually, it's even better than that. Google also makes the browser engine and a search tool many people use to navigate the web, as well as many of the destinations those people are searching for and the ad network used on most ad-supported sites. No other company has that much apparent power over the web.
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All hope wouldn't be lost if these changes hit Google Chrome. People could switch to browsers like Firefox, Safari or Brave to continue using ad blockers. There are also hardware solutions like the Pi-hole for people who don't mind tinkering a bit and want even greater control over the information they share.

Google might not move forward with the proposed change to Chromium. But even considering this shift demonstrates the potential risks of giving one company so much influence over the web.

Quote:Thus far, feedback from actual extension developers has been unilaterally negative. The hard-coded limit on blocked or redirected URLs has been criticized by almost everyone in the Google Chromium development thread. Anti-phishing and anti-malware extension developers are also concerned because the new rules require that extension data be stored in plaintext, whereas some security-related extensions store information in hashed form.
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Google’s claim that these changes will improve security and performance have been met with a gimlet eye overall. Several developers have pointed out that the performance impact of running uBlock or other ad blockers on websites is so large, any performance gains Google gets from adopting a faster API will be completely subsumed by the sharp limits on the amount of content those extensions are actually able to block. Speeding up page loads by 20 percent may not mean much if you’re loading 3-5x more data relative to using an ad blocker. Security extension authors have also argued that the security risk to breaking their own products is larger than the sum total of the improvements Google is hoping to gain.

For now, Manifest V3 remains a draft document. If Google decides to implement the current version of the standard, Firefox may see a sudden uptick in adoption. It’s now the only major cross-platform browser in active development that isn’t based on Chromium.

Quote:Windows 7 only has one year left to live, at least as far as official support goes. Microsoft is set to end free support for the operating system on January 14, 2020, exactly one year from today. Business customers can extend the availability of security updates for up to three years, but this support has to be paid for on a per-device basis, with the price increasing every year.

Quote:Windows 10 was already the most used operating system among Steam users, but it was still trailing Windows 7 among the general public for a long time. Now the latest statistics from NetMarketShare for the month of December have revealed that the OS has finally surpassed the marketshare of Windows 7.

Over the last year, the share of Windows 7 was within striking distance of Windows 10, but December finally saw the operating system being overtaken by the latter with a lead of approximately three percent. The gains could be due to the new PCs sold over the holiday season, but the numbers can only be expected to improve from here on as Windows 7, which was released a decade ago this comiung July, is in its final year of free extended support from Microsoft.

Quote:Former software engineering intern on the Edge team at Microsoft Joshua Bakita says otherwise though. In a post on Hacker News, Bakita says that one of the reasons for the switch was because Google kept changing up their web apps, making them not run properly on other browsers.

Here's the full post:
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What's particularly interesting about this is that whether Google did this intentionally or not, Microsoft fell into a trap that it set for itself. When Bakita says, "we couldn't keep up", and goes on to say that the issue is fixed in the Windows 10 October 2018 Update, that's actually because Microsoft set a path for itself where it could only add new features to Edge with feature updates to Windows 10. That limits the company to twice per year.

With the new Chromium-based Edge, the browser will finally be separated from the OS, so it can be updated independently. That's a big change because that means that it can be updated as often as the Edge team wants.

Quote:I have no doubt that Microsoft tests many features that it doesn’t roll out to customers. I highly doubt they bother to create FAQ documents spelling out exactly how the feature works, which customers it impacts, which OS versions it applies to, which countries are currently enrolled in pilot testing, and the exact rules for when and how ads will be shown for a feature they have no intention of deploying. Saying something was never intended to be tested broadly could simply mean the test was intended to be confined to the countries listed above as opposed to rolling out to Windows Insiders in general.

If you think about it, you can tell the difference. When people’s Windows 10 Pro installations were erroneously flagged as Windows 10 Home earlier this month, there wasn’t an initial Microsoft response. The company eventually released a quick “Hey, we’re working to fix the problem.” When a company has an FAQ drawn up with this kind of information on it, it means that feature and its implementation have been thoroughly discussed already, even if a rollout or public announcement hasn’t been set yet.

Earlier this year, Microsoft tried to scare people away from using Chrome. The Verge points out one change I missed — in March, Microsoft tested a feature in which clicking on links in Mail would open them in Edge rather than the system default browser, bypassing your own browser preference. Now, it wants to bury ads in Mail as a way of shoving people into using Office 365.

Microsoft needs to step back and consider how its aggressive and unwelcome intrusions are changing the perceived dynamic between the company and its users. After several poor update experiences, I find myself unconsciously thinking about a major Windows update the same way I’d think about the chore of minding a child I had to watch, constantly. Updates don’t mean nifty new features, they mean trudging through the OS to find whatever defaults Microsoft has changed to favor its own preferences as opposed to mine. This, of course, assumes I’m not spending several hours trying to fix whatever bugs Microsoft introduced via the update process.

It would be nice, at least, if Microsoft was honest about its own intentions. “We introduced scary language to push users away from Chrome because no one likes our browser,” would be a good start. So would “We put ads in Mail hoping to annoy more of you into giving us money.”

Quote:IBM and Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source cloud software, announced today that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which IBM will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Red Hat for $190.00 per share in cash, representing a total enterprise value of approximately $34 billion.

"The acquisition of Red Hat is a game-changer. It changes everything about the cloud market," said Ginni Rometty, IBM Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. "IBM will become the world's #1 hybrid cloud provider, offering companies the only open cloud solution that will unlock the full value of the cloud for their businesses.

Quote:Both iOS and Android allow developers to reach out to your phone when you have their app installed. If the app is present, the phone replies and receives data. However, the phone is silent if the app is no longer installed. Uninstall tracking notes this as a newly lost user, giving the developer a chance to pitch woo at you. This is where things get stalker-ish.

Every mobile device has a unique advertising ID, which companies use to target ads unless you disable this feature in your account settings. Uninstall tracking uses that ID to follow you around the web and hit you with ads, imploring you to reinstall the app. Companies could use uninstall tracking to find out why people uninstall apps and make improvements, but more often than not, they appear to just go after users with ads.

This behavior is technically against the rules imposed by both Apple and Google. Developers aren’t allowed to use push notifications to send ads or generate an advertising database, but it’s unclear if Google or Apple could feasibly to enforce that. For the time being, you should opt out of ad personalization features in your Google or Apple iAds account if this bothers you.

Quote:According to Google’s VP of engineering Ben Smith, the company undertook a security and privacy audit earlier this year called Project Strobe. Specifically, Google started looking at its API endpoints over concern developers could abuse them. Facebook’s recent difficulties highlighted that possibility, of course. While Facebook was able to power through its security crisis because it’s so huge, Google+ was barely hanging on before Google began its investigation.

Google discovered a problem with the Google+ People API that could allow third-party developers to scrape optional profile information made available to your friends like name, email, occupation, and gender. Google says it does not see evidence that developers made use of the bug before it was patched back in March, but it can’t be 100 percent certain.

Because Google doesn’t keep API log data on G+, it can’t confirm how many users were vulnerable, but it thinks the number is north of 500,000. It’s possible you have a Google+ page with personal data on it and simply forgot about it. Google pushed its social platform very hard for several years, going so far as to integrate its comments with YouTube and make web logins part of G+. And for what? Google’s examination of G+ in the wake of the security mess forced it to confront some hard truths. For example, 90 percent of G+ sessions latest less than five seconds.

Google+ usage among consumers is so abysmal that it’s not worth the headache of revamping its security model. So, Google is shutting it down consumer access to G+. The service will wind down slowly over the next 10 months, but it plans to reformulate G+ as a business tool of some sort. The security flaw feels more like an excuse to kill a product that has underperformed for years.

Quote:What's probably more interesting to most users is that the advertising giant opted to not disclose the issue. Moreover, Google CEO Sundar Pichai was briefed on the decision to not tell anyone. The reason, as reported by WSJ, is that it wasn't reported "because of fears that doing so would draw regulatory scrutiny and cause reputational damage".

Google's Privacy and Data Protection Office was where the decision was made to not notify users, and the company decided that since it doesn't know which developers have what data, there's really no action that users could take. There was also a memo, however, that said that revealing the issue would cause the company " coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal” and it “almost guarantees Sundar will testify before Congress.”

That's referring to Facebook's similar issues. A Cambridge Analytica researcher had created an app that took advantage of Facebook's policy at the time that provided information of the user's information as well as their friends' information.

Quote:Let’s start at the beginning. Prior to Chrome 69, Chrome offered an optional sign-in feature. This feature had nothing to do with your various accounts on services like Gmail or YouTube — instead, it allowed Google to synchronize things like cookies and bookmarks across all of the devices on which you used Chrome services. Many people embraced the feature, but Google kept it opt-in. The old login icon looked like a blank outline of a person. When clicked, it displayed the following message:

But now, Google has changed this message. Download and install Chrome 69, and the browser now treats this sign-in option as exercised if you log into any Google account. In other words, Google now treats the Chrome sign-in and the Google account sign-in as equivalent.
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But this kind of pattern deployment is fundamentally toxic to trust. It’s particularly toxic for a company that’s proven so willing to end-run around user expectations, including promising two years ago not to track users who turned off location tracking, only to later admit that hey, it’s still tracking users who turn off location tracking. Google has also acknowledged allowing third parties to sweep Gmail for data as well.

On a personal note, it’s deeply unsurprising to see Google do this. Green points out that Google is promising to respect a user’s sync settings after deliberately breaking the conventions that end users were using to tell Google they didn’t wish to sync their software across devices. But this is unsurprising. It’s exactly what Google did years ago with its own opt-out system for automatic updates. The company establishes a mechanism by which users can opt out of something, then breaks that mechanism if too many people opt out of it. We’re supposed to trust that Google will respect the decision of people who don’t want to sync their data with its servers when it just broke the mechanism by which people previously notified it that they did not wish to synchronize with its servers? Muddying the waters with a login that isn’t a login and a “Sync” panel that can seamlessly activate a feature users don’t want aren’t improvements — they’re just as scummy as the games Microsoft played with its Windows 10 update tool near the official end of the free Windows 10 rollout period.

This kind of behavior is profoundly damaging to any conception of trust. Combined with the endless privacy scandals coming out of Google and the company’s willingness to help the Chinese government spy on its own people and it’s worth asking why we respect this company at all.