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Devs will get a chance to save one of Windows 11’s most-ignorable features.
Enlarge / Microsoft will allow third-party apps to bundle their own widgets starting later this year. (credit: Microsoft)
When Windows 11 did away with support for Live Tiles, Microsoft attempted to relocate some of that quick, glance-able information into a new Widgets menu that lives in the taskbar alongside the Start and search menus. Our main issue with widgets in our Windows 11 review was that they were limited to Microsoft's apps and services, with no mechanism for third parties to develop their own widgets.
That will change later this year, according to an announcement made at Microsoft's Build developer conference. Third parties will be able to develop their own Windows 11 widgets "beginning later this year." This suggests that it will be among the tweaks and new features coming for Windows 11 22H2, the operating system's first big yearly update.
Widgets can be packaged as companions for traditional Win32 apps and Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), and they'll use the Adaptive Cards platform that Microsoft created to enable cross-platform widgets and UI previews.
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Old and new come together to surpass expectations, take our breath away.
Enlarge / Tom Cruise, still crazy after all these years. (credit: Skydance Productions)
As I walked out of my review screening of Top Gun: Maverick, coming down from its adrenaline-filled finale, a small part of my brain began looking for dents in the film's armor. Maybe it's the critic in me, but my thoughts didn't need long to land on stuff from the original film—a plot point, a stylistic choice, a particular character—that didn't return this time.
I chewed on those thoughts for a second, but before I could lose myself in cataloging them at length, a sensation came over me. It landed like a massive G-force blast, as if I were a jet fighter pilot attempting a seemingly impossible climb: one of great satisfaction with this sequel and admiration that this film pulled off the impossible feat of adhering to the old while doing something new.
Returning to old haunts. (credit: Skydance Productions)
The series' predilection for steering military theater toward Hollywood-style silliness is arguably more tolerable, as tempered by a savvy script and cutting-edge stunt work. The character development hits important notes for both Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and the people in his high-speed orbit, and the film's focused supporting cast mostly hits the mark.
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Tesla “ambushed” woman with one-sided arbitration agreement, judge writes.
Enlarge / Tesla cars in a lot at the company's factory in Fremont, California. (credit: Getty Images | Justin Sullivan)
Tesla can't force a woman who sued the company over sexual harassment into arbitration, a judge ruled on Monday.
Jessica Barraza sued Tesla in November 2021 in Alameda County Superior Court in California, alleging that she and other women working in the carmaker's Fremont factory were subjected to "nightmarish conditions of rampant sexual harassment." The Tesla factory "resembles a crude, archaic construction site or frat house," with women enduring sexual comments, propositions, and inappropriate touching, the lawsuit said.
Barraza also alleged Tesla retaliated against her after she complained about sexual harassment and that she was "denied certain privileges and benefits that were afforded to women who did not object to supervisors' sexual advances and flirtations." Many more details are in our coverage of the lawsuit.
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Microsoft’s Build developer conference is taking place this week, and Microsoft has already announced a bunch of new and upcoming software and service updates coming for developers and end users. One of the most intriguing is ARM-native versions…
Microsoft’s Build developer conference is taking place this week, and Microsoft has already announced a bunch of new and upcoming software and service updates coming for developers and end users. One of the most intriguing is ARM-native versions of the company’s developer tools, plus a new ARM-based PC for developers set to launch later this […]
The post Lilbits: 3rd-party widgets for Windows 11, restore MS Store apps on a new PC, and more from MS Build appeared first on Liliputing.
Microsoft’s Build developer conference is taking place this week, and Microsoft has already announced a bunch of new and upcoming software and service updates coming for developers and end users. One of the most intriguing is ARM-native versions…
Microsoft’s Build developer conference is taking place this week, and Microsoft has already announced a bunch of new and upcoming software and service updates coming for developers and end users. One of the most intriguing is ARM-native versions of the company’s developer tools, plus a new ARM-based PC for developers set to launch later this […]
The post Lilbits: 3rd-party widgets for Windows 11, restore MS Store apps on a new PC, and more from MS Build appeared first on Liliputing.
The makers of the Banana Pi line of single-board computers clearly draw a bit of inspiration from the Raspberry Pi Foundation when it comes to naming their products. Some of their designs are also rather obviously Raspberry Pi inspired. Case in point:…
The makers of the Banana Pi line of single-board computers clearly draw a bit of inspiration from the Raspberry Pi Foundation when it comes to naming their products. Some of their designs are also rather obviously Raspberry Pi inspired. Case in point: the new Banana Pi BPI-CM4 compute module doesn’t just look like a Raspberry Pi Compute […]
The post Banana Pi BPI-CM4 compute module with Amlogic A311D is pin compatible with Raspberry Pi CM4 appeared first on Liliputing.
Ten years ago, Google expanded its transparency efforts by documenting all DMCA takedown notices received by the company. This was done to give the public more insight into where the “free flow of information” on the Internet is blocked. At the time Google spotted a massive increase in takedowns, but the real surge was yet to come.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Exactly ten years ago, Google expanded its transparency report with a new section dedicated to DMCA takedown requests.
For the first time, outsiders were able to see what URLs copyrights holders targeted and in what quantity.
The decision to make this information public was in part triggered by a rapid increase in removal requests. This was having an impact on the “free flow of information”, according to the search engine.
“We believe that openness is crucial for the future of the Internet. When something gets in the way of the free flow of information, we believe there should be transparency around what that block might be.”
According to Fred von Lohmann, Google’s Senior Copyright Counsel at the time, DMCA notices were skyrocketing.
“These days it’s not unusual for us to receive more than 250,000 requests each week, which is more than what copyright owners asked us to remove in all of 2009,” Van Lohman wrote at the time.
In hindsight, this was just the start of a takedown explosion. A few years later Google processed more than 20 million DMCA notices per week, which translates to more than a billion per year.
This growth curve eventually flattened and in recent years the takedown volume has started to decline. This is in part due to the various anti-piracy algorithms that push pirated content down in the search results.
By downranking pirate site results, infringing content has become harder to find in the search engine. As a result, Google now processes ‘just’ a few hundred million DMCA requests per year.
After ten years of takedown transparency, we take a look at the totals thus far, which are quite impressive. Over the past decade rightsholders asked Google to remove 5.75 billion URLs that allegedly link to copyright-infringing content.
These takedown requests come from just over 300,000 different copyright holders. UK music group BPI is the most prolific sender. With 570 million reported links, it’s good for nearly 10% of all takedown requests.
Looking at the targeted domains we see that 4shared.com is in the lead with 68 million reported URLs. Most of these were flagged several years ago. In recent years, the site is flagged ‘only’ a few thousand times per week, with less than a million reported links per year.
The top five most targeted domain names is completed with the defunct site mp3toys.xyz, hosting platforms rapidgator.net, chomikuj.pl, and uploaded.net, as well as the unblocking proxy portal unblocksites.co.
The figures refer to the number of URLs that are reported but not all of these are actually removed from the search engine. The stats also count duplicate reports, bogus claims, and URLs that are not indexed by Google.
For example, if we look at the reports from MindGeek’s “MG Premium” we see that the company reported over 494 million URLs over the years. Little over half of these were actually removed by Google.
Of the remaining URLs, 128 million were not in Google’s index. These have been placed on a preemptive blocklist, to prevent them from appearing in search results later on. Another 70 million links were classified as duplicates, while nearly 7 million were rejected for other reasons.
While these numbers are interesting by themselves, the biggest contribution of the transparency report is the ability for outsiders to spot faulty and abusive notices. This is possible because Google shares all reported links with the Lumen Database, which is managed by Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center.
Over the years this database has allowed us to spot thousands of problematic takedowns, ranging from honest mistakes, through automated takedown errors, to plain abuse.
There are numerous examples of mistakes we can mention. Microsoft once targeted the BBC, Wikipedia, and the US Government; Movie studios asked Google to remove their own films; A French movie and TV show database targeted Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes, and so on.
With billions of reported URLs is no surprise that these errors happen but by pointing them out in public, those responsible can be held to account. That must have resulted in a higher takedown accuracy rate over time.
It will be interesting to see how takedown trends develop over the coming years. As long as Google continues its transparency report, we will surely keep an eye on it.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Snapdragon-powered “Project Volterra” will focus on AI and machine learning.
Enlarge / Microsoft's Project Volterra is an Arm-powered developer desktop launching later this year. This image depicts two Volterra boxes stacked on top of one another. (credit: Microsoft)
Windows on Arm is arguably as successful as it has ever been—you can buy multiple Arm-powered Windows laptops and tablets, and those devices can run nearly the entire range of available Windows apps thanks to x86-to-Arm code translation. That said, Windows on Arm still accounts for just a fraction of the entire Windows ecosystem, and native Arm apps for the platform are still relatively rare.
At its Build developer conference today, Microsoft made a few announcements aimed at bolstering Windows on Arm. The first is Project Volterra, a Microsoft-branded mini-desktop computer powered by an unnamed Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC. More relevant for developers who already have Arm hardware, Volterra will be accompanied by a fully Arm-native suite of developer tools.
According to Microsoft's blog post, the company will be releasing ARM-native versions of Visual Studio 2022 and VSCode, Visual C++, Modern .NET 6, the classic .NET framework, Windows Terminal, and both the Windows Subsystem for Linux and Windows Subsystem for Android. Arm-native versions of these apps will allow developers to run them without the performance penalty associated with translating x86 code to run on Arm devices—especially helpful given that Arm Windows devices usually don't have much performance to spare.
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Upcoming 500 Hz monitor targets PC gamers with beefed-up systems, various skill levels.
A 24-inch PC monitor with the ability to update its image 500 times per second will be available soon, Asus and Nvidia announced Tuesday. The monitor should boost desktop monitors from the 360 Hz max native refresh rate they see today while putting a mysterious new spin on an old panel technology.
Aptly named the Asus ROG Swift 500 Hz Gaming Monitor, it manages high refresh rates with lower resolution. The 1920×1080 screen leverages a new take on TN (twisted nematic) panels called E-TN, with the "E" standing for esports. According to Asus, the E-TN panel offers "60 percent better response times than standard TN panels," and in its own announcement, Nvidia claimed the E-TN panel brings "maximum motion and clarity." But neither detailed how the technology differs from regular TN.
Standard TN panels have been becoming less common among PC monitor releases as IPS (in-plane switching) and VA (vertical alignment) panels continue catching up in speed while being known for stronger viewing angles, in the case of IPS, and larger contrast ratios, in the case of VA. Those opting for TN are willing to sacrifice some image quality in the name of speed or, often, lower prices. It's unclear how much sacrifice E-TN may require (besides a max resolution of 1080p) or how much of a premium it'll have compared to today's standard TN monitors.
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