An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: [T]he last couple Windows 11 Insider Preview builds have augmented Windows 11's touchscreen capabilities. The build released to Dev channel users last week included new gestures, changes to how snapping windows works when in tablet mode, and a few other improvements. And a new build released today totally overhauls the taskbar for touchscreens.

Windows 11 in its current form adds more space between icons when you're using your device as a tablet, but the new preview goes further. When you're using apps, the taskbar will shrink to a narrow strip across the bottom of the screen: it's still tall enough to show the clock and your network, sound, and battery status icons, but all your pinned apps and other system tray icons are hidden. Swiping up from the bottom of the screen or closing an app window brings up a new, larger version of the taskbar with larger, more finger-friendly icons and spacing. The taskbar disappears again once you've launched your app. "Windows 11 still doesn't have a dedicated Tablet Mode toggle like Windows 10 did," notes Ars. "Instead, the OS relies on signals from your hardware to enable and disable the tablet-centric UI tweaks."

Samsung shipped an estimated 100 million smartphones with botched encryption, including models ranging from the 2017 Galaxy S8 on up to last year's Galaxy S21. Threatpost reports: Researchers at Tel Aviv University found what they called "severe" cryptographic design flaws that could have let attackers siphon the devices' hardware-based cryptographic keys: keys that unlock the treasure trove of security-critical data that's found in smartphones. What's more, cyber attackers could even exploit Samsung's cryptographic missteps -- since addressed in multiple CVEs -- to downgrade a device's security protocols. That would set up a phone to be vulnerable to future attacks: a practice known as IV (initialization vector) reuse attacks. IV reuse attacks screw with the encryption randomization that ensures that even if multiple messages with identical plaintext are encrypted, the generated corresponding ciphertexts will each be distinct.

The design flaws primarily affect devices that use ARM's TrustZone technology: the hardware support provided by ARM-based Android smartphones (which are the majority) for a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) to implement security-sensitive functions. TrustZone splits a phone into two portions, known as the Normal world (for running regular tasks, such as the Android OS) and the Secure world, which handles the security subsystem and where all sensitive resources reside. The Secure world is only accessible to trusted applications used for security-sensitive functions, including encryption.

Matthew Green, associate professor of computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, explained on Twitter that Samsung incorporated "serious flaws" in the way its phones encrypt key material in TrustZone, calling it "embarrassingly bad." "They used a single key and allowed IV re-use," Green said. "So they could have derived a different key-wrapping key for each key they protect," he continued. "But instead Samsung basically doesn't. Then they allow the app-layer code to pick encryption IVs." The design decision allows for "trivial decryption," he said.

Samsung responded to the academics' disclosure by issuing a patch for affected devices that addressed CVE-2021-25444: an IV reuse vulnerability in the Keymaster Trusted Application (TA) that runs in the TrustZone. Keymaster TA carries out cryptographic operations in the Secure world via hardware, including a cryptographic engine. The Keymaster TA uses blobs, which are keys "wrapped" (encrypted) via AES-GCM. The vulnerability allowed for decryption of custom key blobs. Then, in July 2021, the researchers revealed a downgrade attack -- one that lets attacker trigger IV reuse vulnerability with privileged process. Samsung issued another patch -- to address CVE-2021-25490 -- that remoged the legacy blob implementation from devices including Samsung's Galaxy S10, S20 and S21 phones.

HP, Lenovo, Acer, and Asus are expected to be among the first companies to release gaming Chromebooks. From a report: A code change in the Chromium Gerrit suggests the vendors are working on Chrome OS devices that will support Steam. In January 2020, Google said it would bring Steam to Chromebooks, and the plan may be starting to take shape. 9to5Google spotted a code change on Saturday showing a list of what appears to be Chromebook models that will support Steam:

Acer Chromebook 514 (CB514-1H)
Acer Chromebook 515
Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (CP713-3W)
Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 (CX5500)
Asus Chromebook CX9 (CX9400)
HP Pro c640 G2 Chromebook
Unknown Chromebook from Lenovo.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNET: The delayed 5G BlackBerry phone is dead, OnwardMobility has confirmed on its website. "It is with great sadness that we announce that OnwardMobility will be shutting down, and we will no longer be proceeding with the development of an ultra-secure smartphone with a physical keyboard," OnwardMobility said in a message posted Friday, as spotted earlier by CrackBerry. "Please know that this was not a decision that we made lightly or in haste. We share your disappointment in this news and assure you this is not the outcome we worked and hoped for." Android Police and CrackBerry originally reported the phone had been cancelled on Feb. 11, saying OnwardMobility, a Texas-based startup seeking to revitalize the iconic brand through an Android-based, next-gen Wi-Fi device, lost the license from BlackBerry Ltd. to use the BlackBerry brand name. OnwardMobility did not expand on why it is shutting down and cancelling production of the phone. The news comes after BlackBerry ended service for its legacy devices in early January. "Before OnwardMobility picked up the license, Chinese manufacturer TCL was the most recent maker of BlackBerry-branded phones," adds CNET.

Most recently, the company sold its prized patent portfolio to "Catapult IP Innovations Inc." for $600 million.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Now that Windows 11's first major post-release update has been issued, Microsoft has started testing a huge collection of new features, UI changes, and redesigned apps in the latest Windows Insider preview for Dev channel users. By and large, the changes are significant and useful -- there's an overhauled Task Manager, folders for pinned apps in the Start menu, the renewed ability to drag items into the Taskbar (as you could in Windows 10), improvements to the Do Not Disturb and Focus modes, new touchscreen gestures, and a long list of other fixes and enhancements.

But tucked away toward the bottom of the changelog is one unwelcome addition: like the Home edition of Windows 11, the Pro version will now require an Internet connection and a Microsoft account during setup. In the current version of Windows 11, you could still create a local user account during setup by not connecting your PC to the Internet -- something that also worked in the Home version of Windows 10 but was removed in 11. That workaround will no longer be available in either edition going forward, barring a change in Microsoft's plans. While most devices do require a sign-in to fully enable app stores, cloud storage, and cross-device sharing and syncing, Windows 11 will soon stand alone as the only major consumer OS that requires account sign-in to enable even basic functionality.

Roku, the leading supplier of smart TV OS in North America, is looking at possibly building its own TV sets. Nexttv reports: According to Business Insider, Roku convened a focus group earlier this month in which participants were shown "different models, feature sets and names, sizes, price points," of smart TVs, according to an individual "familiar" with the event. This unnamed person told the news site that the moderator made it clear that Roku is exploring the possibility of "going it alone" with its own "manufacturing operation," and not merely attaching its brand to an existing smart TV manufacturer's product line.

"The OS/2 community is getting close to obtaining a modern browser on their platform," writes Slashdot reader martiniturbide. In an announcement article on Monday, president of the OS/2 Voice community, Roderick Klein, revealed that a public beta of the new Chromium-based Otter Browser will arrive "in the last week of February or the first week of March." XDA Developers reports: OS/2 was the operating system developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the intended goal of replacing all DOS and Windows-based systems. However, Microsoft decided to focus on Windows after the immense popularity of Windows 3.0 and 3.1, leaving IBM to continue development on its own. IBM eventually stopped working on OS/2 in 2001, but two other companies licensed the operating system to continue where IBM left off -- first eComStation, and more recently, ArcaOS.

BitWise Works GmbH and the Dutch OS/2 Voice foundation started work on Otter Browser in 2017, as it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep an updated version of Firefox available on OS/2 and ArcaOS. Firefox 49 ESR from 2016 is the latest version available, because that's around the time Mozilla started rewriting significant parts of Firefox with Rust code, and there's no Rust compiler for OS/2. Since then, the main focus has been porting Qt 5.0 to OS/2, which includes the QtWebEngine (based on Chromium). This effort also has the side effect of making more cross-platform ports possible in the future.

The 111-year-old tech institution today announced it will offer the Z mainframe platform on the IBM Cloud, by offering virtual machines running z/OS as-a-service. The Register reports: These VMs are intended for mainframe test and development environments, rather than have Big Blue care for and feed virtual production mainframes in the cloud for you. The service will be tied to Wazi -- an IBM development environment for mainframe applications. Test and dev was one of the first workloads suggested as an ideal candidate to run in the cloud. Before elastic infrastructure-as-a-service, organizations often found themselves building and operating replicas of their production stacks for their developers. Renting such environments as and when needed in the cloud was often -- and often remains -- cheaper than owning and operating the necessary infrastructure.

This infrastructure-as-a-service offering is therefore pitched as a way to reduce the time and resources required to develop mainframe applications. IBM said the new offering is currently a "closed experimental" technology -- we think that means closed beta. It's certainly not mentioned in the catalog of the IBM Cloud account your correspondent maintains, so information on cost or specs is not available at the time of writing. The service will become generally available in the second half of 2022 -- after IBM's 112th birthday.

Microsoft is bringing new touch gestures, Start menu folders, a redesigned Task Manager, and lots more improvements to Windows 11. From a report: A new build of Windows 11 is available to testers today, and it's full of new features that look like they will significantly improve the usability of Windows 11 overall. The new Start menu folders will allow Windows 11 users to customize the pinned section of the Start menu into folders. You drag an app on top of another to create a folder, and you can rearrange apps within folders and remove them. The ability to rename folders is coming in future test builds, but it's good to see more customization on the Start menu, given Windows 11 launched without many ways to tweak the menu design. If you've always been a fan of the gestures in Windows 8, Microsoft is bringing five new touch gestures to Windows 11 soon that will make using tablets a little easier. The first is the ability to swipe up on the taskbar to bring up the Start menu and swipe down to dismiss it again. You'll also be able to swipe between pinned, all apps, and recommended / more on the Start menu. [...] Last but not least, the Task Manager redesign in Windows 11 is now official. It includes a new command bar and a dark theme, alongside an efficiency mode that lets you limit apps from consuming system resources.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Here's a fun new feature of Android 13: working virtualization support. Google is building virtualization into Android for its own reasons, but Android developer kdrag0n has commandeered the feature to boot ARM Windows 11 and desktop Linux. The developer even got the Windows version of Doom running, all inside a VM on the Pixel 6. kdrag0n says that Android 13 has "full KVM functionality" at "near-native performance." You need root to enable the functionality, which doesn't support GPU acceleration. The functionality also doesn't support nested virtualization, so while you can now run Android on Windows and Windows on Android, making an infinitely nested OS turducken is out of the question.

This makes for a neat demo that's not at all what Google wants to do with Android's upcoming VM support. Esper's Mishaal Rahman has been meticulously tracking Android's virtualization progress for some time now, and the apparent plan is to someday (maybe in Android 13) use virtual machines as a security and privacy sandbox for various features. Imagine instead of processing sensitive data at the normal app permission level, the data could be processed in a separate OS, so any attackers would have to break through the app security model, then Android, then the hypervisor, then this other, private OS.

Google has announced a new version of Chrome OS called Chrome OS Flex, which is designed to run on old PCs and Macs. The Verge reports: The operating system can be installed "within minutes," according to Google's blog post. Google told me that Chrome OS Flex will look and feel identical to Chrome OS on a Chromebook -- it's built from the same code base and follows the same "release cadence." It did caveat that some features may be dependent on the hardware of the PC you're using. In fact, it said this for every specific feature I asked about, including always-on Google Assistant and Android phone syncing. So, if you're going to try this, keep an eye out.

If you want to try out Chrome OS Flex yourself, you can learn more on the Chrome Enterprise website. Note that the OS is still in early access mode, so you may encounter bugs -- you can boot it directly from a USB drive if you'd rather poke around before installing it on your machine.

Microsoft is releasing its first big update to Windows 11 today, and it includes a lot of new additions. From a report: A public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will be available today in the US, alongside redesigned Notepad and Media Player apps. The first big Windows 11 update will also include a bunch of improvements to the taskbar. The public preview of Android apps on Windows 11 will allow users to install apps from Amazon's Appstore. The Verge points to workarounds to get Google Play Store running on Windows 11 unofficially. Back to more changes: The biggest changes in this Windows 11 update are related to the taskbar. The time and date will finally be available on multiple monitors in Windows 11, something that was missing at launch. The weather widget also returns to the taskbar in this update, and a new mute / unmute feature in the taskbar will be available for Microsoft Teams calls. You'll also be able to quickly screen share a specific app or window from the taskbar directly into a Microsoft Teams call. Microsoft has also redesigned the Media Player and Notepad apps for Windows 11. Notepad now includes multi-step undo, an improved search interface, and dark mode support. The new Media Player app is designed to replace Groove Music and Windows Media Player and includes support for both audio and video and a design that better matches Windows 11's UI improvements.

Liliputing reports: When Valve's Steam Deck begins shipping to customers later this month, the handheld gaming PC will be running a Linux-based operating system called Steam OS. And that could give gaming on Linux a bit of a boost.

While Valve's game client has been able to run on Linux for years, as of last month just over 1% of Steam users were running Linux (and fewer than 3% were using macOS, with Windows holding a 96% share). It'll be interesting to see if that starts to change once the Steam Deck hits the streets. And if it does, maybe we'll see more game makers add support for Linux... but one of the most popular games around isn't going to add Linux support anytime soon: Epic CEO Tim Sweeney says the company has no plans to port Fortnite to Linux.

He says it's because Epic doesn't "have confidence that we'd be able to combat cheating at scale under a wide array of kernel configurations including custom ones," but it's an interesting take since Epic has already ported its anti-cheat software to support Mac and Linux devices including the Steam Deck.

Intel's mysterious Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) mechanism for adding features to Xeon CPUs will be officially supported in Linux 5.18, the next major release of the operating system. Tom's Hardware reports: SDSi allows users to add features to their CPU after they've already purchased it. Formal SDSi support means that the technology is coming to Intel's Xeon processors that will be released rather shortly, implying Sapphire Rapids will be the first CPUs with SDSi. Intel started to roll out Linux patches to enable its SDSi functionality in the OS last September. By now, several sets of patches have been released and it looks like they will be added to Linux 5.18, which is due this Spring. Hans de Goede, a long-time Linux developer who works at Red Hat on a wide array of hardware enablement related projects, claims that SDSi will land in Linux 5.18 if no problems emerge, reports Phoronix. "Assuming no major issues are found, the plan definitely is to get this in before the 5.18 merge window," said de Goede.

Intel Software Defined Silicon (SDSi) is a mechanism for activating additional silicon features in already produced and deployed server CPUs using the software. While formal support for the functionality is coming to Linux 5.18 and is set to be available this spring, Intel hasn't disclosed what exactly it plans to enable using its pay-as-you-go CPU upgrade model. We don't know how it works and what it enables, but we can make some educated guesses. [...]

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Setting up a Raspberry Pi board has always required a second computer, which is used to flash your operating system of choice to an SD card so your Pi can boot. But the Pi Foundation is working on a new version of its bootloader that could connect an OS-less Pi board directly to the Internet, allowing it to download and install the official Raspberry Pi OS to a blank SD card without requiring another computer. To test the networked booting feature, you'll need to use the Pi Imager on a separate computer to copy an updater for the bootloader over to an SD card -- Pi firmware updates are normally installed along with new OS updates rather than separately, but since this is still in testing, it requires extra steps.

Once it's installed, there are a number of conditions that have to be met for network booting to work. It only works on Pi 4 boards (and Pi 4-derived devices, like the Pi 400 computer) that have both a keyboard and an Ethernet cable connected. If you already have an SD card or USB drive with a bootable OS connected, the Pi will boot from those as it normally does so it doesn't slow down the regular boot process. And you'll be limited to the OS image selection in the official Pi imager, though this covers a wide range of popular distributions, including Ubuntu, LibreELEC, a couple of retro-gaming emulation OSes, and Homebridge. For other OSes, downloading the image on a separate PC and installing it to an SD card manually is still the best way to go. To learn more about installing the bootloader or download the Pi OS over a network, you can view the Raspberry Pi Foundation's documentation here.

slack_justyb writes: "Quietly making its v1.0 debut yesterday was system76-scheduler as a Rust-written daemon aiming to improve Linux desktop responsiveness and catering to their Pop!_OS distribution," reports Phoronix.

The daemon will work with the kernel's CFS scheduler to give priority to components that System76 deems important for its distro. Out of the box, the scheduler will assign priority to the X.Org Server and desktop window managers/compositors, while pushing compilers and other background tasks lower. However, the scheduler will be configurable via Rusty Object Notation (RON) files found in /etc/system76-scheduler/assignments/ and /usr/share/system76-scheduler/assignments/.

Over on the GitHub page for the project, the team indicates that they are indeed making a trade-off from the default CFS to benefit Desktop configurations over the typical load a server might see.

In a tech world still hindered by component shortages, choices have to be made. And in the world of laptops, it seems that choice is Windows-based devices over those running Chrome OS. From a report: IDC on Monday released early data from its latest Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker. It pointed to a sharp 63.6 percent decline in Chromebook shipments, which the IDC defines as "shipments to distribution channels or end users, in Q4 2021 (4.8 million shipments) compared to Q4 2020 with (13.1 million shipments)." In addition to market saturation, supply issues also hurt Chromebook shipments, as the industry still struggles with a deficit of PC components, from CPUs to integrated circuits for Wi-Fi modules and power management. "Supply has also been unusually tight for Chromebooks as component shortages have led vendors to prioritize Windows machines due to their higher price tags, further suppressing Chromebook shipments on a global scale," Jitesh Ubrani, research manager with IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, said in a statement accompanying Monday's announcement.

According to a post on the Microsoft IT Pro Blog, Windows computers will need at least eight hours of online time to obtain and install the latest OS updates successfully. Tom's Hardware reports: Another revelation in the post is that Microsoft tracks how long PCs are connected to Windows Update, calling the statistics "Update Connectivity." The data is available to IT managers in the InTune app, a component of the Endpoint management suite. The post details Microsoft's attempts to figure out why some Windows devices aren't getting the latest quality and feature updates, and discovered that two hours of continuous connectivity was required to get updates. It then took six hours after the release of the patch for a machine to update itself reliably.

Microsoft's figures show that 50 percent of Windows devices left behind by Windows Update and running a build of Windows 10 that's no longer serviced do not spend enough time connected to have the patches downloaded and installed in the background. This figure drops to 25 percent for customers using a serviced build of the operating system that lags behind in security updates by 60 days or more. The goods news, as noted by Tom's Hardware, is that "Windows 11 updates are smaller than their Windows 10 counterparts due to improved compression [and] new Microsoft Graph APIs," which should help speed up the update process.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: The next class of Chrome OS devices may be targeted at the gaming market -- more than one Chromebook is set to release with a full RGB keyboard. Similar to how Chrome OS offers support for Linux apps and Android apps, there's been a long-running effort -- codenamed Borealis -- to get Steam and various Linux-compatible PC games running in a virtual machine on your Chromebook. While there's yet to be any formal announcement of Steam games for Chromebooks, work has steadily continued since the project was first discovered.

Whether through Steam games or game streaming services, it seems Google's gaming ambitions for Chrome OS may be coming to fruition in the near future. According to changes to Chrome OS code in the last few weeks, Google has begun working to support Chromebooks with full color RGB keyboards -- you can't have a product for gamers without RGB, right? Right? -- starting with a new feature flag. From what we can find, each keyboard key can be individually customized to your liking to vary the intensity of the red, green, and blue lighting to create different colors and adjust the keyboard's overall backlight brightness. For now, this is only possible through an internal command for Chrome OS developers to use in testing. In time, one would assume there would be a tool within Chrome OS to let gamers change the colors of their keyboards.

At first glance, one could argue that this is just about supporting the many USB and Bluetooth connected keyboards you can buy with RGB lighting built in. However, with a bit more digging, we've found that rather than being a generic feature, Chrome OS's RGB support is being prepared for a select few unreleased devices. So who is going to be making the first gaming Chromebooks? For the time being, there appear to be at least three hardware codenames associated with RGB keyboards. The first two are Vell and Taniks, both of which are based on Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake laptop processors. [...] A third hardware codename attached to RGB keyboards for Chrome OS is Ripple. However, rather than being the name of a particular Chromebook, it seems that Ripple is the internal name of a detachable keyboard, like that of the Pixel Slate.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard, written by Aaron Gordon: Not quite three years ago, I bought a Pixel 3, Google's flagship phone at the time. It has been a good phone. I like that it's not too big. I dropped it a bunch, but it didn't break. And the battery life has not noticeably changed since the day I got it. I think of phones in much the same way I think of refrigerators or stoves. It's an appliance, something I need but feel no attachment to, and as long as it keeps fulfilling that need, I don't want to spend money replacing it for no real reason. The Pixel 3 fulfills my needs, so I don't want to spend $600 on the Pixel 6, which seems to be just another phone that does all the phone things.

But I have to get rid of it because Google has stopped supporting all Pixel 3s. Despite being just three years old, no Pixel 3 will ever receive another official security update. Installing security updates is the one basic thing everyone needs to do for their own digital security. If you don't even get them, then you're vulnerable to every security flaw discovered since your last patch. In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, "We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device."

This has been a problem with Android for as long as Android has existed. In 2015, my colleague Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai wrote a farewell to Android because of its terrible software support and spotty upgrade rollouts. Android has long blamed this obvious issue on the fact that updates need to run through the cellphone company and phone manufacturer before being pushed to the user. At the time, Google didn't make any Android phones; the Nexus line was the closest thing, a partnership with other manufacturers like Motorola and HTC (I had one of those, too). But for the past six years, Google has made the Pixel line of phones. They are Google-made phones, meaning Google can't blame discontinuing security updates on other manufacturers, and yet, it announced that's exactly what it would do. Gordon goes on to say that he's "switching to an iPhone for the first time," noting how the most recent version of iOS can be installed on phones going as far back as the iPhone 6s, which was released more than six years ago.

"Unless you routinely destroy your phone within two or three years, there's no justification from a sustainability perspective to keep using Android phones," he adds. "Of course, Apple is only good by comparison, as it also manufactures devices that are difficult to repair with an artificially short shelf life. It just happens to have a longer shelf life than Google."