Microsoft realizes it has crammed Your Phone with features as of late, and it’s giving the software a rework to help you manage all that content. The company has unveiled a rebranded Windows 11 Your Phone app, now called Phone Link, that includes a redesigned interface. The updated software puts notifications out front to make sure you don’t miss an important alert. You’ll also have tabbed navigation that should help you better manage apps, calls, messages and photos.
The refresh also brings visuals more in line with Windows 11’s look and feel. It will be easier to get started, for that matter. An upcoming Windows 11 update will let you set up Phone Link by scanning a QR code.
The release comes alongside a renaming of the Android app to Link to Windows (formerly Your Phone Companion) to better illustrate its role. Phone Link won’t necessarily eliminate the urge to check your device, but it might prevent the flood of information from becoming overwhelming.
Google Meet video chats should now be more useful if you need to get work done, or just don’t want them monopolizing your screen. Google is rolling multiple Workspace updates that include offering Meet video chats directly in Docs, Sheets and Slides. You can start a virtual meeting and carry it over to the document you’re working on to help you collaborate without flipping between tabs. You can also present that content if it’s ready to go. This should be available in the “coming weeks,” Google said.
You will have the freedom to switch tabs if you want, though. Google is also introducing much-needed picture-in-picture support (at middle) to Meet sometime in April. You’ll need to use Chrome, but the feature will let you see up to four video tiles in a separate window while you jump between other tabs and apps. This will be helpful if you need to show different tabs during a presentation, but let’s be honest — it will also help you keep a video chat running when you can’t (or don’t want to) devote your full attention.
Google
Other upcoming Meet improvements include in-meeting emoji reactions (due in April) and the option to add your own video tile from the interactive Companion Mode and your laptop camera (arriving later this year). Meet hardware is starting to offer automatic noise cancellation, too. The collaborative Spaces environment, meanwhile, will finally offer inline threading to keep your conversations tidy.
The improvements are acknowledgments that remote and hybrid work are here to stay despite return-to-office plans at many companies. At the same time, they appear to be genuinely helpful features that might encourage you to use Workspace… and, of course, skip rivals like Microsoft Teams.
Apple isn’t the only major tech brand introducing a fix-it-yourself program this year. Samsung is teaming up with iFixit to launch a self-repair program for Galaxy devices in the US sometime this summer. Most details won’t be available until the program is ready, but you’ll have access to official parts and repair tools as you walk through step-by-step repair guides. The early part selection will include back glass, charging ports and display assemblies.
The Samsung self-repair program will initially cover the Galaxy S20 and S21 phone lines as well as the Galaxy Tab S7+. Don’t expect to service your new Galaxy S22 Ultra at first. The company will expand its effort to cover more devices and repair categories, though, and you can send the faulty parts to Samsung for recycling.
The company pitches the self-repair option as both a “convenience” and a sustainability move. You can fix your Galaxy hardware on your own terms rather than creating more e-waste. However, this is also likely a response to Right to Repair regulation and advocacy. Samsung can show that it’s at least somewhat DIY-friendly before regulators swoop in, even if the products themselves aren’t very conducive to repairs at the moment.
Tech companies don’t always disclose security flaws in a timely fashion, but Wyze apparently didn’t disclose one at all. As Bleeping Computer and The Verge explain, Bitdefender has revealed that it informed Wyze of a major security vulnerability in the Wyze Cam v1 in March 2019, but that the device maker didn’t inform customers, recall the product or fully patch the problem in the three years since. In fact, Wyze couldn’t completely fix the issue — while it did mitigate the problem with patches, it’s now clear the company discontinued the camera in January as “hardware limitations” prevented a proper update.
The vulnerability let attackers remotely control the camera without knowing the value normally needed to authenticate. While they couldn’t watch live video as it was encrypted, they could steer the camera, switch it off and access videos saved on the SD card. Wyze patched the bug for its v2 and v3 cameras in late January.
Wyze was slow to respond and didn’t fully share the nature of the security hole. Bitdefender noted that Wyze only acknowledged reception of the warning in November 2020, a year and a half after it was delivered. And while it did tell customers that it discontinued the Wyze Cam v1 due to incompatibility with a security update, it didn’t tell users this was a known three-year-old flaw. It Wyze spokesperson Kyle Christensen told The Verge that the company had been transparent and “fully corrected” the problem, but in practice the firm only told owners that using the v1 camera after February 1st carried “increased risk.”
It’s not clear if any hackers took advantage of the flaw, but the potential consequences were serious. An intruder could have looked at past activity in the home or disabled the camera ahead of a burglary.
There are also questions surrounding Bitdefender’s very late disclosure. The company’s PR director Steve Fiore told The Verge that it delays publishing reports when it’s not clear a vendor can properly address an issue. It didn’t want to expose “potentially millions” of Wyze Cam users by sharing details of the exploit to with the public. However, security researchers typically disclose flaws within weeks, not years — even Google’s more cautious Project Zero shares technical details within 90 days. While it’s not always easy for tech firms to address vulnerabilities quickly, disclosures can help pressure companies into fixing security issues that might otherwise go unresolved.
The US Space Force needs to prepare for calamities, but how can it do that when it can’t practice using real satellites in orbit? It’s going to use a digital twin, apparently. Slingshot Aerospace says it’s developing a “Digital Space Twin” that will combine physics-based modelling with real-time object mapping to help the Space Force simulate various situations and plan responses well in advance.
The twin will help mission teams decide how to react to a potential collision, for instance. The Space Force could also use the simulation to design safer and more efficient satellite constellations. And yes, the military branch will also use the digital environment to ready itself for “nefarious acts” from countries with a less-than-peaceful approach to space.
Slingshot is building the Digital Space Twin thanks to a 39-month, $25.2 million contract. The funding will also help Slingshot conduct a pilot program that brings a Laboratory simulation platform (shown above) to Space Force educational and training outfits, including Basic Military Training, the National Security Space Institute and two training squadrons.
Any practical proof of effectiveness is likely years away. With that said, digital twins like this might be crucial for the Space Force and other beyond-Earth agencies. They could not only trim costs and speed up development, but help avoid disasters that ruin costly spacecraft or spark international incidents.
Astronomers have had success finding some of the most distant galaxies in the universe, but now they might have pinpointed the most distant star to date. As SyFy Wirenotes, researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted Earendel (“morning star” in Old English), a star currently reckoned to be 12.9 billion light-years away — the light we see from it comes from when the universe was roughly 900 million years old. Until now, the smallest objects seen at that distance were star clusters.
If confirmed, the star will easily smash the previous record. The most distant star before now was MACS J1149+2223 Lensed Star 1, which shone when the universe was about 4 billion years old. Scientists found that star using Hubble in 2018.
The ancient star Earendel capured in a composite of exposures from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The feat was accomplished using gravitational lensing, or relying on the gravity of galaxy clusters to distort light and magnify objects that would otherwise remain difficult or impossible to detect. The star’s host galaxy had its light warped into a long arc thanks to the massive WHL0137-08 galaxy cluster. As Earendel sits on the edge of a space “caustic,” or a ripple in the fabric of space, its brightness was magnified a thousand times and helped it stand out.
Earendel is a large beast, too. The scientists estimate it’s “at least” 50 times the mass of the Sun, and millions of times brighter. It’s also expected to have relatively little metal, as it would have formed when it didn’t have access to heavier elements that came with successive star generations. If it’s made of only hydrogen and helium, it would be the first evidence of very early “Population III” stars.
The object hasn’t been confirmed as a star yet, but that might come relatively soon. Observers plan to use the James Webb Space Telescope’s high infrared sensitivity to both verify Earendel’s star status and study it in more detail. With that said, Webb might also help pinpoint stars that are even more distant. To put it another way, he technology needed to acknowledge the star’s existence might relegate it to a footnote.
Apple is well-known for doing things in-house whenever possible, and that might even extend to financial services. Bloombergsources claim Apple is laying the groundwork for “future financial services” through a multi-year effort that would bring more financial procedures under the company’s wing. The iPhone maker is reportedly developing its own payment processing system, and also wants to handle credit checks, risk assessment for loans and other behind-the-scenes tasks.
The initiatives are meant for future offerings, according to the sources. This wouldn’t augment Apple Card, Apple Pay, contactless payments for stores or other known financial products. The first product to rely on the payment processing would supposedly be a service nicknamed “Apple Pay Later” that lets you pay off devices in either four interest-free instalments or monthly instalments with interest.
Apple has already declined comment. This isn’t the first time in recent weeks that the company was said to be shaking up its business models, though. A previous rumor also suggested Apple was planning a hardware subscription service where you’d pay a monthly fee to use the latest devices.
The greater responsibility could prove a challenge. Apple has “faced some hurdles” developing the payment processing tech, Bloomberg said. However, the company has multiple incentives to take more control of financial services. It could launch new features faster, and in countries where they wouldn’t otherwise be viable. Apple might also take a larger slice of revenue in some cases. Simply put, Apple might not be held back by payment processors and banks like some of its peers.
Waymo is now operating fully driverless cars in more than one city. The Alphabet-owned brand has started trials of self-driving Jaguar I-Pace EVs in San Francisco with no backup drivers. The tests are limited to employees hailing rides in the company’s early service area, but this still represents a major milestone — the company claimed in a message to Engadget that it was the first anywhere to offer autonomous ride-hailing in two different territories.
You’ll also see an expanded footprint in Arizona. Waymo said it will expand fully autonomous rides to downtown Phoenix, starting with employees. Members of the public in the Trusted Tester program can hail rides “soon after,” Waymo said.
It’s not certain when Waymo might offer trips to the general public in San Francisco. The company recently received permission to charge for self-driving rides in California, but only as long as there’s a backup driver aboard. Still, both rollouts indicate greater confidence on Waymo’s part. It’s more willing to test its autonomous system in densely-populated areas (where traffic and roadwork can be huge headaches), and without leaning as much on human safety nets.
Intel has only just detailed its first Arc laptop GPUs, but it’s already teasing its desktop plans. The company has offered a peek at an Arc A-series Limited Edition video card arriving sometime this summer — yes, that’s another delay. There are no specs or prices, unfortunately, but the double-height design and twin-fan cooling make clear this is aimed directly at gamers who’d normally buy AMD or NVIDIA boards.
Early Arc desktop GPUs are expected to support a raft of modern features, including hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and AI-based supersampling. Intel is already developing second-generation GPUs, nicknamed Battlemage, and expects the third-gen Celestial hardware to target the “ultra-enthusiast” camp.
It’s still too soon to say if Arc desktop models will offer truly competitive performance. This latest delay doesn’t help, though. NVIDIA is poised to deliver its first Ampere Next-based GPUs (likely the RTX 40 series) later this year, and AMD will follow suit with the Radeon RX 7000 series. Intel is aiming at a moving target, and there are no guarantees a card released this summer will hold its own against the absolute latest the competition has to offer.
Canada is joining the ranks of countries and states planning to ban sales of combustion engine cars. Canada has outlined an Emissions Reduction Plan that will require all new passenger car sales to be zero-emissions models by 2035. The government will gradually ramp up pressure on automakers, requiring “at least” 20 percent zero-emissions sales by 2026 and 60 percent by 2030.
Officials didn’t say whether this applied to a make’s product mix or simply the volume of cars sold. The strategy is more forgiving for the workplace — the Canadian government wanted 35 percent of total medium- and heavy-duty vehicle sales to be zero-emissions by 2035, and 100 percent of a “subset” of those machines by 2040.
The country is also offering $1.7 billion CAD (about $1.36 billion US) to extend incentives for buying electric cars and other zero-emissions vehicles. The current federal program offers up to a $5,000 CAD ($4,010 US) rebate for EVs, plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cell cars that meet varying price, seat and battery requirements. Some provinces, such as British Columbia and Nova Scotia, offer their own incentives.
The broader plan is meant to reduce emissions to 40 to 45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050. This includes funds to support renewable energy projects, shrink oil industry emissions and develop “nature-based climate solutions.”
Canada’s car market is small compared to the US. Passenger vehicle sales in Canada reached 1.64 million in 2021, according to estimates, versus an estimated 15 million for the country’s southern neighbor. However, the de facto ban on combustion engine cars could further motivate car brands already transitioning to EVs — that’s still a lot of potentially lost sales, particularly for a country known for its auto manufacturing plants.
