Meta plans to stop making consumer versions of its Portal video calling hardware and instead pivot the product line to focus on use cases for businesses, like conference calling. The Verge reports: The change in strategy, first reported by The Information and confirmed to The Verge by a source familiar with the matter, comes as Meta is reassessing its ambitious hardware plans against investor concerns about the billions of dollars it's spending on projects that have yet to pay off financially.

The Portal line debuted in 2018 with two displays meant as dedicated video calling stations. [...] New versions have been released in the time since, including the portable Portal Go, but the device never became a huge hit. The research firm IDC estimates that Meta shipped 800,000 Portals in 2021, accounting for less than 1 percent of the global smart speaker and display market, according to The Information. Meta currently sells four Portal products, from a $99 TV-connected camera to a $349 smart display.

An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from an opinion piece via The Register, written by longtime technology reporter and Linux enthusiast Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols: Recently, The Register's Liam Proven wrote tongue in cheek about the most annoying desktop Linux distros. He inspired me to do another take. Proven pointed out that Distrowatch currently lists 270 -- count 'em -- Linux distros. Of course, no one can look at all of those. But, having covered the Linux desktop since the big interface debate was between Bash and zsh rather than GNOME vs KDE, and being the editor-in-chief of a now-departed publication called Linux Desktop, I think I've used more of them than anyone else who also has a life beyond the PC. In short, I love the Linux desktop. Many Linux desktop distros are great. I've been a big Linux Mint fan for years now. I'm also fond, in no particular order, of Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, and MX Linux. But you know what? That's a problem right there. We have many excellent Linux desktop distros, which means none of them can gain enough market share to make any real dent in the overall market.
[...]
Besides over 200 distros, there are 21 different desktop interfaces and over half-a-dozen different major ways to install software such as the Debian Package Management System (DPKG), Red Hat Package Manager (RPM), Pacman, Zypper, and all too many others. Then there are all the newer containerized ways to install programs including Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage. I can barely keep them all straight and that's part of my job! How can you expect ordinary users to make sense of it all? You can't. None of the major Linux distributors -- Canonical, Red Hat, and SUSE -- really care about the Linux desktop. Sure, they have them. They're also major desktop influencers. But their cash comes from servers, containers, the cloud, and the Internet of Things (IoT). The desktop? Please. We should just be glad they spend as many resources as they do on them.

Now, all this said, I don't want you to get the impression that I don't think the conventional Linux desktop is important. I do. In fact, I think it's critical. Microsoft, you see, is abandoning the traditional PC-based desktop. In its crystal ball, Microsoft sees Azure-based Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) as its future. [...] That means that the future of a true desktop operating system will lie in the hands of Apple with macOS and us with Linux. As someone who remembers the transition from centrally controlled mainframes and minicomputers to individually empowered PCs, I do not want to return to a world where all power belongs to Microsoft or any other company. "The Linux desktop will never be as big as Windows once was," writes Vaughan-Nichols in closing. "Between DaaS's rise and the fall of the desktop to smartphones, it can't be. But it may yet, by default, become the most popular true conventional desktop."

The Biden administration on Thursday pledged to have 500,000 public charging stations for electric vehicles in place by 2030. "The proposed standards, which will be published next week in the Federal Register, dictate that a charging station be located every 50 miles along the interstate and no more than a mile off the highway," reports USA Today. "Stations would be required to maintain a minimum number and type of chargers capable of serving multiple customers." From the report: Stations would be prohibited from requiring drivers to have a membership or be part of a club to use their chargers. Real-time information on pricing and location would have to be available to help motorists using a GPS app better plan their trip. The Federal Highway Administration's proposed standards will apply to federally funded charging stations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The goal is to ensure a seamless system of charging stations that can be used by motorists no matter what car they drive, where they live or how they pay. [...] The administration is providing more than $5 billion to states over the next five years to build a network of charging stations along the nation's interstates.

Intel, one of the world's leading chipmakers, has responded to global headwinds by joining a string of other tech companies in placing a freeze on new hires as it seeks ways to cut costs. Fortune reports: "Increased focus and prioritization in our spending will help us weather macroeconomic uncertainty, execute on our strategy, and meet our commitments to customers, shareholders, and employees," Intel said in a statement provided to Fortune on Thursday, a day after Reuters reported a leaked internal memo announcing the hiring freeze at Intel.

According to the memo, Intel is placing a two-week hiring freeze on its client computing group, which creates PC chips for desktop and laptop computers. Client computing is Intel's largest division by sales, generating just over 50% of the manufacturer's revenue last quarter. In April, Intel issued weaker-than-expected profit guidance for the second quarter, citing reduced PC chip sales. But Citi's semiconductor analyst, Christopher Danely, predicts Intel will miss its weak second-quarter guidance, following negative comments Intel CFO David Zinsner made at a Bank of America conference on Tuesday.

"Weaker" macroeconomic conditions are "clearly going to impact" Intel's earnings, Zinsner said, adding that "the circumstances at this point are much worse than what we had anticipated coming into the quarter."

Google today announced a set of new and updated security features for Chrome, almost all of which rely on machine learning (ML) models, as well as a couple of nifty new ML-based features that aim to make browsing the web a bit easier, including a new feature that will suppress notification permission prompts when its algorithm thinks you're unlikely to accept them. From a report: Starting with the next version of Chrome, Google will introduce a new ML model that will silence many of these notification permission prompts. And the sooner the better. At this point, they have mostly become a nuisance. Even if there are some sites -- and those are mostly news sites -- that may offer some value in their notifications, I can't remember the last time I accepted one on purpose. Also, while legitimate sites love to push web notifications to remind readers of their existence, attackers can also use them to send phishing attacks or prompt users to download malware if they get users to give them permission. "On the one hand, page notifications help deliver updates from sites you care about; on the other hand, notification permission prompts can become a nuisance," Google admits in its blog post today. The company's new ML model will now look for prompts that users are likely to ignore and block them automatically. And as a bonus, all of that is happening on your local machine, so none of your browsing data makes it onto Google's servers.

A new dataset from Google shows the features on the surface of the Earth in near real time, the company announced Thursday. The tool, called Dynamic World, uses deep learning and satellite imagery to develop a high-resolution land cover map that shows which bits of land have features like trees, crops, or water. From a report: Land cover maps usually take a long time to produce, and there are big gaps between the time images are taken and when the data is published. They also often don't have a detailed breakdown of what's on the ground in a particular area -- a city would be classified as "built-up" (a designation for human-altered landscapes) even if there are big sections with parks, for example. Dynamic World classifies the land cover type for every 1,100 square feet, Google said. It shows how likely it is that the sections are covered by one of nine cover types: water, flooded vegetation, built-up areas, trees, crops, bare ground, grass, shrub / scrub, and snow / ice. Google detailed its system, developed with the World Resources Institute, in a paper published in Nature's Scientific Data.

GitHub has announced that it will sunset Atom, the text editor for software development that the company introduced in 2011. In a blog post, GitHub said that it will archive the Atom repository and all other repositories remaining in the Atom organization on December 15, 2022. From a report: Atom served as the foundation for the Electron framework, which paved the way for thousands of apps including Microsoft Visual Studio Code, Slack, GitHub's own GitHub Desktop. But GitHub asserts that Atom community involvement has declined as new tools have emerged over the years. Atom itself hasn't seen significant feature development for the past several months beyond maintenance and security updates.

The Chinese government made another attempt in promoting its vision of the internet, in a repackaging intended to lure lagging regions. From a report: Throughout the years, China has made several attempts at changing the current internet architecture, mostly in the context of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nation's agency for ICT technologies. Contrarily to other standardisation organisations that are dominated by private companies, in ITU governments play a leading role. Thus, Beijing has been using this forum to attract countries that might have similar interests in asserting stronger governmental control over the internet. In September 2019, the delegate of Chinese telecom juggernaut Huawei presented a proposal for a new IP (Internet Protocol). In February, EURACTIV anticipated that more proposals were expected in the context of the World Telecommunication Standardisation Assembly.

Beijing's new proposal took the form of a modification of a resolution set to be adopted at the World Telecommunication Development Conference, the ITU's conference dedicated to telecom development that takes place in Rwanda from 6 to 16 June. Two weeks ago, the Chinese government circulated a modification of a resolution that in a footnote introduced the concept of IPv6+, presented as an enhanced version of the latest version of the internet protocol, known as IPv6. At around the same time, IPv6+ was promoted by Huawei. "IPv6+ can realize more open and active technology and service innovation, more efficient and flexible networking and service provision, more excellent performance and user experience," the footnote reads. According to the document, seen by EURACTIV, IPv6+ would have three crucial advantages. A more efficient allocation of information across the network; integration of other technologies that allow for an organisation of network resources; integration of innovative solutions.

Google Cloud developer advocate Emma Haruka Iwao and her colleagues say they've calculated Pi to 100 trillion digital decimal places. Engadget reports: Iwao and her team previously set the record in 2019 when they carried out a calculation to an accuracy of 31.4 trillion digits. The benchmark has been broken a few times since then [...]. In a blog post, Iwao wrote that finding as many digits of Pi as possible is a way to measure the progress of compute power. Her job involves showing off what Google Cloud is capable of, so it's not too surprising that Iwao tapped into the power of the platform to perform the calculation.

In 2019, the calculation (which figured out a third as many digits as the most recent attempt) took 121 days. This time around, the calculation ran for 157 days, 23 hours, 31 minutes and 7.651 seconds, meaning the computers were running more than twice as quickly despite Iwao using "the same tools and techniques." Around 82,000 terabytes of data were processed overall. Iwao also notes that reading all 100 trillion digits out loud at a rate of one per second would take more than 3.1 million years. And in case you're wondering, the 100-trillionth decimal place of Pi is 0.

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has halted development of a smartwatch with dual cameras and is instead working on other devices for the wrist, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing a person with knowledge of the matter. From the report: The device, which has been in development for at least two years, was designed to include several features common in other smartwatches, including activity tracking, music playback and messaging. A prototype of the now halted device includes dual-cameras, a key differentiator from market leaders like the Apple Watch. One camera was located below the display and another sat on the backside against the wearer's wrist, according to images and video of a prototype seen by Bloomberg. The second camera was designed so users could remove the watch face from its strap to quickly take pictures. But the presence of the camera caused issues with another feature for translating nerve signals from the wrist into digital commands, the person said. Having that technical ability, known as electromyography, is a top priority for Meta.

In 2019, Ars Technica reported on a new advanced ignition system from Transient Plasma Systems that replaces the conventional spark plugs in a vehicle's engine with an ignition module that uses very short duration pulses of plasma to ignite the fuel/air mixture within the cylinder. Now, about three years later, the system is "almost ready for production after validation testing has confirmed its potential to increase fuel efficiency by up to 20 percent when fitted to an existing engine." From the report: TPS's plasma ignition system is designed to drop into existing cars with very little modification. An ignition module replaces the regular spark plugs, and there's a power module to control it, but otherwise the only other modifications are in software, as the engine requires remapping to take advantage of the new technology. "A lot of the OEMs we've been working with are freezing their engine designs, they're saying, 'No more new engine block, we might change some parts out, but we're freezing the design.' So it has to basically just drop into the holes that already exist, which this technology does," [said Dan Singleton, founder and CEO of TPS]. [...]

The final stage of testing for TPS's system is to prove its durability, but Singleton expects this won't be a problem. "The technology uses all solid-state, high-voltage switches -- these are switches that are used in applications where they're run for millions and millions of shots. If you just did an analysis of the parts, you would say no problem, right? The testing that still needs to be done is, once you've put it into a package where it's going to go to altitude and extreme heat, extreme cold, you just have to do some design validation and tweaking," he said. [...]

As for when we might see the first cars fitted with plasma ignition on the road, Singleton was optimistic. "We are currently in discussions with a couple of Tier 1s and OEMs that are interested in acquiring the technology or working with us to take this to market. The most aggressive timeline that one of those companies has told us is that they could get it to market in 18 months from the start of a deal. That's aggressive. And typically it takes longer in automotive to do testing, but if they say they can do it, this is their world, not mine. So 18 months, I would say, from the start of a partnership," Singleton said. Why develop a new internal combustion engine technology when we're going all in on electric vehicles? Here's what Singleton told Ars: "[W]e do think that the future is going to be EVs. But the question is, what do we do while we're ramping up? And I think if you look at the data, it's pretty compelling that the best thing you can do is to start getting CO2 emissions down now. So that's really where we see this fitting in is if you put this technology to market immediately. That's what our data shows is that there's immediate, meaningful CO2 reductions."

Ars also notes that "it's going to be many years before countries like the US stop selling new internal combustion-powered vehicles and longer still until they're no longer allowed on our roads."

The European Parliament on Wednesday threw its weight behind a proposed ban on selling new cars with combustion engines in 2035, seeking to step up the fight against climate change through the faster development of electric vehicles. The Associated Press reports: The European Union assembly voted in Strasbourg, France, to require automakers to cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 100% by the middle of the next decade. The mandate would amount to a prohibition on the sale in the 27-nation bloc of new cars powered by gasoline or diesel. EU lawmakers also endorsed a 55% reduction in CO2 from automobiles in 2030 compared with 2021. The move deepens an existing obligation on the car industry to lower CO2 discharges by 37.5% on average at the end of the decade compared to last year.

Environmentalists hailed the parliament's decisions. Transport & Environment, a Brussels-based alliance, said the vote offered "a fighting chance of averting runaway climate change." But Germany's auto industry lobby group VDA criticized the vote, saying it ignored the lack of charging infrastructure in Europe. The group also said the vote was "a decision against innovation and technology" a reference to demands from the industry that synthetic fuels be exempt from the ban, which European lawmakers rejected. If approved by EU nations, the 2035 deadline will be particularly tough on German automakers, who have focused on powerful and expensive vehicles with combustion engines while falling behind foreign rivals when it comes to electric cars.

The UK government says it is not "currently considering" copying European Union plans for a common charging cable. From a report: The EU has provisionally agreed all new portable electronic devices must, by autumn 2024, use a USB Type-C charger, a move it says will benefit consumers. Critics say it will stifle innovation. Under the current post-Brexit arrangements, the regulation would apply to Northern Ireland, according to EU and UK officials. According to the a December 2021 parliamentary report, the "new requirements may also apply to devices sold in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Northern Ireland protocol in the Brexit agreement, potentially triggering divergence of product standards with the rest of the UK." The treaty works by keeping Northern Ireland inside the EU's single market for goods, while the rest of the UK is outside it. A row between the UK and EU about how to reform the Northern Ireland protocol remains unresolved. A UK government spokesperson said "we are not currently considering replicating this requirement."

The European Union is working on a possible ban on the provision of cloud services to Russia as part of new sanctions against the Kremlin for the invasion of Ukraine, an EU official told Reuters on Wednesday, noting the measure was technically complex. From a report: If introduced, it is unclear how the EU ban would affect Russia, because top cloud providers in Europe are U.S. companies, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The European Union last week adopted a new package of sanctions against Russia and Belarus which included an oil embargo, restrictive measures on Russian banks and a ban on the provision of consultancy services to Moscow.

Microsoft is substantially reducing its business in Russia, joining the list of prominent technology firms cutting back or exiting the country altogether after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. From a report: "As a result of the changes to the economic outlook and the impact on our business in Russia, we have made the decision to significantly scale down our operations in Russia," the company said in an emailed statement. "We will continue to fulfill our existing contractual obligations with Russian customers while the suspension of new sales remains in effect." More than 400 employees will be affected, a company spokesperson said. "We are working closely with impacted employees to ensure they are treated with respect and have our full support during this difficult time," Microsoft said in the statement.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Who knows whether it's FOMO or actual customer demand for such a thing, but Salesforce announced today that it's launching a pilot of NFT Cloud, a new platform for buying and selling these crypto assets. It's a turn to the future, according to the company, one it insists comes from customer curiosity. "Salesforce is seeing interest from CMOs and CDOs who are asking for help entering web3, and we are enthusiastic about bringing new innovations, products and offerings to our customers in a way that allows them to build and maintain meaningful relationships with their customers," Adam Caplan, SVP of Emerging Technology at Salesforce told TechCrunch.

The company's goal with this product is to make NFT selling more accessible. "NFT Cloud is all about helping our customers mint, manage and sell NFTs, and of course it's all no code. So it's super easy on our platform, abstracting all the complicated technology in this [new] web3 world," he said. He says he's seeing interest across a variety of verticals including retail, media, fashion and consumer goods, among others. "It's really about driving engagement and communities, and we're seeing super passionate communities in the NFT space..." Caplan explained. He sees it as a way to market to customers with something of potential value to them. "It's really about utility. And what we mean by utility is as an NFT holder, I receive certain benefits. It could be something in a digital world, or it could be something in the physical world," he said.

Waymo and Uber, former legal foes and bitter rivals in the autonomous vehicle space, are teaming up to speed up the adoption of driverless trucks. The Verge reports: Waymo is integrating Uber Freight, the ride-hail company's truck brokerage, into the technology that powers its autonomous big rigs. This "long-term strategic partnership" will enable fleet owners to more quickly deploy trucks equipped with Waymo's autonomous "driver" for on-demand delivery routes offered by Uber Freight, the companies said.

Waymo describes the team-up as a "deep integration" of each company's products, including a jointly developed "product roadmap" to outline how autonomous trucks will get deployed on Uber's network once they are commercial ready. Until then, Waymo says it will use Uber Freight with its own test fleet to better understand how driverless trucks will receive and accept delivery orders. But the partnership goes beyond just beta testing each other's technology. Waymo said it will reserve "billions of miles of its goods-only capacity for the Uber Freight network" in a capacity commitment meant to underscore the seriousness of this partnership. The report notes that Alphabet's Waymo sued Uber in early 2017 over allegations of trade secret theft and patent infringement. The two sides reached a settlement agreement about a year later. "Uber later admitted that it misappropriated some of Waymo's tech and vowed to license it for future use," adds The Verge.

The developers behind the open source MongoDB, and its commercial service counterpart MongoDB Atlas, have been busy making the document database easier to use for developers. From a report: Available in preview, Queryable Encryption provides the ability to query encrypted data, and with the entire query transaction be encrypted -- an industry first according to MongoDB. This feature will be of interest to organizations with a lot of sensitive data, such as banks, health care institutions and the government. This eliminates the need for developers to be experts in encryption, Davidson said. This end-to-end client-side encryption uses novel encrypted index data structures, the data being searched remains encrypted at all times on the database server, including in memory and in the CPU. The keys never leave the application and the company maintains that the query speed nor overall application performance are impacted by the new feature.

MongoDB is also now supporting time series data, which are important for monitoring physical systems, quick-moving financial data, or other temporally-oriented datasets. In MongoDB 6.0, time-series collections can have secondary indexes on measurements, and the database system has been optimized to sort time-based data more quickly. Although there are a number of databases specifically geared towards time-series data specifically, such as InfluxDB, many organizations may not want to stand-up an entire database system for this specific use, a separate system costing more in terms of support and expertise, Davidson argued. Another feature is Cluster-to-Cluster Synchronization, which provides the continuous data synchronization of MongoDB clusters across environments. It works with Atlas, in private cloud, on-premises, or on the edge. This sets the stage for using data in multiple places for testing, analytics, and backup.

Apple announced some major new features for Mail that finally bring the email app closer to parity with Gmail and other popular email clients. From a report: Perhaps the most useful will be an undo send feature, which will let you call back an email within 10 seconds of hitting the send button. A "remind me" feature will let you set a time for an email to come back to the top of your inbox. A new scheduled send feature that allows you to specify exactly when an email should go out. And Mail will even tell you when it thinks you've forgotten to include an attachment.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, is going to force smartphone manufacturers like Apple and other electronics makers to equip their devices with a standard USB-C charging port. From a report: EU lawmakers on Tuesday agreed to a single mobile charging port for mobile phones, tablets and cameras. It means equipment makers will have to comply with the new terms by 2024. "We have a deal on the #CommonCharger!" EU commissioner Thierry Breton said via Twitter. The legislation is designed to cut waste and make life easier for consumers who would theoretically be able to use one charger for multiple devices. It could have a huge impact on Apple, as the company still uses its own Lightning connector to charge iPhones. The company has recently equipped iPads and MacBooks with USB-C ports. Apple did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment. However, a spokesperson for the company said last September that the firm stands for "innovation and deeply cares about the customer experience."