Screenshots of Microsoft's upcoming Windows 11 operating system have appeared online today. Originally published at Chinese site Baidu, the screenshots show off the new Windows 11 user interface and Start menu. The UI changes look very similar to what was originally found in Windows 10X before Microsoft canceled that project in favor of Windows 11. From a report: App icons are now centered on the taskbar, with a new Start button and menu. The Start menu is a simplified version of what currently exists in Windows 10, without Live Tiles. It includes pinned apps and the ability to quickly shut down or restart Windows 11 devices. The operating system is identified as Windows 11 Pro in screenshots, and we can confirm they are genuine. Microsoft has been dropping hints that it's ready to launch Windows 11. The software giant is holding a special Windows event to reveal its next OS on June 24th. The event starts at 11AM ET, and the event invite includes a window that creates a shadow with an outline that looks like the number 11. An ISO of Windows 11 has also leaked, according to multiple reports.

In a blog post this morning, Google announced plans to increase its update cadence for Chromebooks. Like Chrome, its operating system will now also follow a four-week Stable channel before moving to the next major milestone release. Android Police reports: Google will deliver fresh features more rapidly to Chromebooks starting with Chrome OS 96 -- all while keeping it stable, secure, and speedy. To adapt to the rigorous update release schedule, Google will skip Chrome OS 95, which will help it bridge the gap between M94 and Chrome's new four-week rollout strategy. Enterprise and education folks can opt enroll in an Extended Stable option for Chromebooks, which will update every 6 months. In light of the new rollout strategy, Google updated its documentation and pushed an update to its release calendar. The company will share plans about the choices Chrome OS administrators will have for milestone updates "in the coming months."

Following Apple's acquisition of popular weather app Dark Sky in March 2020, Dark Sky's iOS app and website will be available until the end of 2022, co-founder Adam Grossman said in a Monday update to Dark Sky's blog. The Verge reports: The update about the 2022 shutdown hit the same day that Apple announced new weather features coming to iOS 15 as part of its WWDC keynote presentation. The stock Weather app is getting a new design, full-screen weather maps, next-hour precipitation notifications, and even new animated backgrounds. Dark Sky shut down the Android and Wear OS versions of its apps on August 1st, 2020. But the iOS app is still available for $3.99 on the App Store, if you're interested in buying it ahead of next year's shutdown. The Dark Sky API will also continue to work for existing customers until the end of 2022. Previously, the API was set to stop working at the end of this year; now, it will work for a little while longer.

AmiMoJo shares a report from Phoronix: The Linux x86/x86_64 kernel code already had logic in place for reserving portions of the first 1MB of RAM to avoid the BIOS or kernel potentially clobbering that space among other reasons while now Linux 5.13 is doing away with that 'wankery' and will just unconditionally always reserve the first 1MB of RAM. The Linux kernel was already catering to Intel Sandy Bridge graphics accessing memory below the 1MB mark, the first 64K of memory are known to be corrupted by some BIOSes, and similar problems coming up in that low area of memory. But rather than dealing with all that logic and other possible niche cases besides the EGA/VGA frame-buffer and BIOS, the kernel is playing it safe and just always reserving the first 1MB of RAM so it will not get clobbered by the kernel.

For the first time, you can code, iterate and build apps on the iPad itself. 9to5Mac reports: Using Swift Playgrounds on iPadOS 15, customers will be able to create iPhone and iPad apps from scratch and then deploy them to the App Store. It remains to be seen how limited or not the development experience will be. It is probably notable that Apple chose not to rebrand this as "Xcode," signifying that you aren't going to be able to do everything you can do with Xcode on the Mac. TechCrunch highlights some of the other new features available in iPadOS 15: iPadOS 15 retains the overall look and feel of the current iPad operating system. The updates in the new OS are mostly centered around multitasking. The iPad's widget support gets a big update with iPadOS 15. The widgets are larger, more immersive and dynamic. And, iOS's App Library is finally available on the iPad, where it tweaks the overall user experience. The feature, added to the iPhone in 2020, presents the user with an organized view of the apps on the iPad.

Also added to iPadOS 15 is a new multitasking system. Called Split View, a drop-down menu at the top of the screen unlocks several multitasking, multiwindow options. The system seems much smoother than the current multiscreen option on iPad OS, which is clunky and hidden. With Split View a feature called Shelf makes it easy to switch between different screens and screen grouping.

A multi-platform Python-based malware targeting Windows and Linux devices has now been upgraded to worm its way into Internet-exposed VMware vCenter servers unpatched against a remote code execution vulnerability. BleepingComputer reports: The malware, dubbed FreakOut by CheckPoint researchers in January (aka Necro and N3Cr0m0rPh), is an obfuscated Python script designed to evade detection using a polymorphic engine and a user-mode rootkit that hides malicious files dropped on compromised systems. FreakOut spreads itself by exploiting a wide range of OS and apps vulnerabilities and brute-forcing passwords over SSH, adding the infected devices to an IRC botnet controlled by its masters. The malware's core functionality enables operators to launch DDoS attacks, backdoor infected systems, sniff and exfiltrate network traffic, and deploy XMRig miners to mine for Monero cryptocurrency.

As Cisco Talos researchers shared in a report published today, FreakOut's developers have been hard at work improving the malware's spreading capabilities since early May, when the botnet's activity has suddenly increased. "Although the bot was originally discovered earlier this year, the latest activity shows numerous changes to the bot, ranging from different command and control (C2) communications and the addition of new exploits for spreading, most notably vulnerabilities in VMWare vSphere, SCO OpenServer, Vesta Control Panel and SMB-based exploits that were not present in the earlier iterations of the code," Cisco Talos security researcher Vanja Svajcer said. FreakOut bots scan for new systems to target either by randomly generating network ranges or on its masters' commands sent over IRC via the command-and-control server. For each IP address in the scan list, the bot will try to use one of the built-in exploits or log in using a hardcoded list of SSH credentials.

Two years into its ban from the US Government and, in turn, access to the Play Store on its Android-powered devices, Huawei is unveiling HarmonyOS. The platform is an alternative to Android that powers TVs, smartphones, tablets, and smartwatches. 9to5Google reports: Announced at an event today, Huawei is positioning HarmonyOS as an operating system that can handle just about everything, from the smartphone in your pocket to IoT devices such as "power sockets and lamps." The company says the goal of the platform is to have one set of code that can be used across virtually any device, saying that it is not aware of "any other operating system in the world" that can cover such a wide range of devices. Leaning into this ability, Huawei developed a "Control Panel," which gives users the ability to connect multiple devices together, with the example of using the "music widget" to throw audio playback to nearby speakers or TVs. A "Super Device" widget shows icons for other nearby devices and enables a quick and easy pairing mode.

On smartphones, the HarmonyOS homescreen can use a swipe-up gesture on apps developed for the platform to see a widget pulling information from that app. Those widgets, apparently, can also be used across devices because of the shared codebase Huawei says HarmonyOS offers. The homescreen can also intelligently add apps to a folder based on the category. Interestingly, Huawei says HarmonyOS devices will also be able to move running apps from one device to another, which is really neat and unique. Moving apps between devices apparently also works between watches and TVs, with a workout app being used on both simultaneously given as an example. A video calling app was also shown moving between devices. Huawei says that performance of HarmonyOS is "superior" to Android with EMUI, specifically calling out long-term use.

While there are certainly new elements in HarmonyOS, it appears to be a "fork" of Android. The Verge spent time with the HarmonyOS-powered MatePad Pro and described the act of installing Android APKs as "though I was using an Android device." Visually, there are also a tremendous number of similarities between HarmonyOS and Android, though there are some distinct elements of Apple's iPad OS in the platform's tablet-optimized homescreen, seen below as Evan Blass posted to Twitter. Android Authority further described HarmonyOS as "ultimately a spin on Android 10" with a "slight rebrand." TechRadar said the software was "clearly" based on Android. These findings from the media appear to back up a previous report from ArsTechnica, which showed the developer preview as basically a clone of EMUI-skinned Android.

"The web browser is a crucial part of modern life, and yet it hasn't really been revised since the '90s," writes Protocol. "That may be about to change." The browser tab is an underrated thing. Most people think of them only when there are too many, when their computer once again buckles under Chrome's weight. Even the developers who build the tabs — the engineers and designers working on Chrome, Firefox, Brave and the rest — haven't done much to them. The internet has evolved in massive, earth-shaking ways over the last two decades, but tabs haven't really changed since they became a browser feature in the mid '90s.

Josh Miller, however, has big plans for browser tabs. Miller is the CEO of a new startup called The Browser Company, and he wants to change the way people think about browsers altogether. He sees browsers as operating systems, and likes to wonder aloud what "iOS for the web" might look like. What if your browser could build you a personalized news feed because it knows the sites you go to? What if every web app felt like a native app, and the browser itself was just the app launcher? What if you could drag a file from one tab to another, and it just worked? What if the web browser was a shareable, synced, multiplayer experience? It would be nothing like the simple, passive windows to the web that browsers are now. Which is exactly the goal.

The Browser Company (which everyone on the team just calls Browser) is one of a number of startups that are rethinking every part of the browser stack. Mighty has built a version of Chrome that runs on powerful server hardware and streams the browser itself over the web. Brave is building support for decentralized protocols like IPFS, and experimenting with using cryptocurrencies as a new business model for publishers. Synth is building a new bookmarks system that acts more like a web-wide inbox. Sidekick offers a vertical app launcher and makes tabs easier to organize. "A change is coming," said Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker. "The question is just the time frame, and what's actually required to make it happen."

They have lots of different ideas, but they share a belief that the browser can, and should, be more than it is. "We don't need a new web browser," Miller said. "We need a new successor to the web browser."

While he was at the White House, Chief Digital Officer (and Miller's boss) Jason Goldman said something Miller couldn't forget. "Platforms have all the leverage," is how Miller remembers it. "And if you care about the future of the internet, or the way we use our computers, or want to improve any of the things that are broken about technology ... you can't really just build an application. Platforms, whether it's iOS or Windows or Android or Mac OS, that's where all the control is."

AmiMoJo shares a report from Tom's Hardware: Asahi Linux developer Hector Martin has revealed a covert channel vulnerability in the Apple M1 chip that he dubbed M1RACLES, and in the process, he's gently criticized the way security flaws have started to be shared with the public. Martin's executive summary for M1RACLES sounds dire: "A flaw in the design of the Apple Silicon 'M1' chip allows any two applications running under an OS to covertly exchange data between them, without using memory, sockets, files, or any other normal operating system features. This works between processes running as different users and under different privilege levels, creating a covert channel for surreptitious data exchange. [...] The vulnerability is baked into Apple Silicon chips, and cannot be fixed without a new silicon revision."

He also noted that this was the result of an intentional decision on Apple's part. "Basically, Apple decided to break the ARM spec by removing a mandatory feature, because they figured they'd never need to use that feature for macOS," he explained. "And then it turned out that removing that feature made it much harder for existing OSes to mitigate this vulnerability." The company would have to make a change on the silicon level with its followup to the M1 to mitigate this flaw. But he also made it clear in the FAQ that Mac owners shouldn't be particularly worried about M1RACLES because that covert channel affects two bits. It can be expanded, and Martin said that transfer rates over 1 MB/s are possible "without much optimization," but any malicious apps that might take advantage of such methods would be far more likely to share information via other channels. Calling this a two-bit vulnerability would be both technically and linguistically correct. It's a real security flaw, sure, but it's unlikely to pose a real threat to Apple's customers.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Every day, people who download and share pirated content receive DMCA notices via their ISPs, warning them to cease and desist their infringing behavior. While the majority of these notices are accurate, one Ubuntu user says he has just been targeted by an anti-piracy company alleging that by torrenting an OS ISO released by Ubuntu itself, he breached copyright law. Posting to Reddit's /r/linux sub-Reddit, a forum with more than 656K subscribers, 'NateNate60' reported the unthinkable. After downloading an official Ubuntu ISO package (filename ubuntu-20.04.2.0-desktop-amd64.iso) he says he received a notice from Comcast's Infinity claiming that he'd been reported for copyright infringement.

"We have received a notification by a copyright owner, or its authorized agent, reporting an alleged infringement of one or more copyrighted works made on or over your Xfinity Internet service," the posted notice reads. NateNate60 wisely redacted the notice to remove the 'Incident Number' and the precise time of the alleged infringement to protect his privacy but the clam was reported filed with Comcast on May 24, 2021. "The copyright owner has identified the IP address associated with your Xfinity Internet account at the time as the source of the infringing works," it continues, adding that NateNate60 should search all of his devices connected to his network and delete the files mentioned in the complaint.

The allegedly infringing content is the 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04.2.0 LTS release but the first big question is whether the file is actually the official release from Canonical. Given that the listed hash value is 4ba4fbf7231a3a660e86892707d25c135533a16a and that matches the hash of the official release, mislabeled or misidentified content (wrong hash, mislabeled file etc) appears to be ruled out. Indeed, the same hash value is listed on Ubuntu's very own BitTorrent tracker and according to NateNate60, this is where he downloaded the torrent that led to the DMCA notice. It doesn't get much more official than that. According to the DMCA notice sent by Comcast, the complainant wasn't Ubuntu/Canonical but an anti-piracy company called OpSec Security, which according to its imprint is based in Germany. Presuming the notice is genuine (albeit sent in error), Comcast needs to be informed that mistakes have been made. The ISP has a repeat infringer policy and given the current hostile environment, terminating users is certainly on the agenda. Indeed, the notice states just that.

Big under-the-hood changes are coming to Google's original Nest Hub, even if most users won't ever be aware of what's happening. From a report: Starting today, the open-source Fuchsia OS will start rolling out to first-gen Nest Hub displays, according to 9to5Google. In the works since 2016, Fuchsia will land first on Nest Hub devices enrolled in Google's Preview Program, before arriving more widely on non-Preview Program displays. Don't expect the user experience to change much, though. 9to5Google notes that the look and feel of Fuchsia OS-powered Nest Hubs will be "essentially identical" to what it was before.

OK, so what's the big deal about Fuchsia, then? It's a new, open-source OS that's decidedly not based on the Linux kernel, as Android and Chrome OS are. Instead, Fuchsia is based on Magneta, which (as we described it back in 2016) is "combination microkernel and set of user-space services and hardware drivers" with a "physics based renderer" that can power graphical user interfaces. Because it's an open-source project, Fuchsia's existence has been well publicized over the years, although its purpose has been harder to fathom; "out in the open" yet "shrouded in mystery" is how we aptly put it. With its arrival on the original Nest Hub, Fuchsia is taking its first tentative steps out of the lab and into the hands of actual users, even if those users aren't aware of the new OS.

Last week, Kevin Purdy of iFixit published a blog post telling the story of "how Samsung announced a 'revolutionary' upcycling program in 2017, delayed it for years, and eventually gutted it before shipping a pale imitation of the original idea," reports Ars Technica. "iFixit was actually involved in the initial 2017 announcement, and the repair outfit says that after endorsing the original idea with its brand and stamp of approval, Samsung never delivered on its promises." From the report: Despite the 2017 announcement of an upcycling program, the code didn't ship until April 2021, when Samsung finally launched a beta version of "Galaxy Upcycling at Home." This program lets users turn end-of-life Samsung phones into smart home sensors that could be paired with Samsung's SmartThings ecosystem. iFixit was initially given an inside look at the project back in 2017, liking it so much that it endorsed the project and lent its name to the marketing materials. To hear iFixit tell the story, bootloader unlocking was actually the original plan. Samsung was going to let users replace the shipping Android OS with whatever they wanted, like builds of LineageOS or some other custom OS. Samsung was also going to launch an open source marketplace where users could submit ideas and software for repurposing old Galaxy devices. iFixit called the original plan "novel" and "revolutionary."

"We were so excited," iFixit writes, "that when Samsung asked us to help launch the product in the fall of 2017, we jumped at the chance. You'll see iFixit's name and logo all over Samsung's original Galaxy Upcycling materials." iFixit went to Samsung HQ in South Korea to see prototypes of the project, and after testing working software, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens actually helped announce the project on stage at Samsung's developer conference in 2017. Despite all the pomp and circumstance, iFixit says, "The actual software was never posted. The Samsung team eventually stopped returning our emails. Friends inside the company told us that leadership wasn't excited about a project that didn't have a clear product tie-in or revenue plan."

iFixit calls the version of the program that launched in April "nearly unrecognizable" to what it originally endorsed. What used to be an ambitious plan now barely makes any sense financially. iFixit rightfully points out that if you really want something as simple as a light sensor or sound monitor, at this point you're better off selling the phone and buying a purpose-built sensor. Samsung's on-rails functionality is so simple that it can be replicated by a $30 sensor, and you're sure to get more than that from a working device on the secondary market, especially due to another limitation of the program: it only extends back to the 3-year-old Galaxy S9.

For over an hour on Saturday, retired Microsoft OS developer David Plummer answered questions from his viewers on YouTube.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: He began with an update on a project to test the performance of the same algorithm using 30 different programming languages, and soon tells the story of how he was inspired to apply for his first job at Microsoft after reading Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire.

I decided that this is where I wanted to work, because these guys sound like me, they act like me, they are what I want to be when I grow up. And holy cow, they pay them well, apparently. So I wrote to everybody that I could find that had a Microsoft email address, which was about four people, because I had a software product people had been regisering on the Amiga. And one guy, Alistair Banks... responded and he hooked me up with a hiring manager directly in Windows that had an open slot that was hiring... And a couple of interview slots later, I wound up as an intern at MS-DOS working for Ben Slivka.

So you would think, "Oh, an intern on MS-DOS. What'd you do? Format disks?" No — it's amazing to me, actually. They give you as much work as they believe that you are capable of, and — they get you for all that you're worth, basically. They had me write a bunch of major features, like the Smart Drive cache for CD-ROMs was the first thing I wrote. Then I wrote DISKCOPY, making it work, single pass, bunch of features in MS-DOS. I re-wrote Setup to work on a single floppy disk by using deltas and patching in place, DOS 5 to turn it into DOS 6, something like, or maybe it was DOS 6 into 6.2... A whole bunch of features, within the span of, like, three months, which to me was fairly impressive at the time, I thought. And that only got me an interview...

Later he says that he'd like to see most of 16-bit Windows and all of MS-DOS open sourced, along with some select application code from that era.

I don't think there's any reason to hold back any of MS-DOS at this point. They have absolutely no reason to open source any of it, really — other than PR, because all it brings them is potential liability, complaints and angst, and probably nothing positive for putting the code out there and exposing it to ridicule. Because it's ancient code at this point. It's like, "Ha! Look what Microsoft did!" Well, yeah, I know Linux is cool now, but go look at Linux code from 1991 — and I worked on some of that code. Well, '93 I did. It's not the same as what you see today.

So yeah, MS-DOS probably looks archaic — although it's super tight, it doesn't have many bugs. It's just written differently than you would write code today, because you're targetting something that is a very different CPU and memory system and PC as a whole, and it's so much more limited that everybody's sacred, every cycle matters. That kind of thing that you don't worry about now. But I'd still like to see all the code from back then that's not embarrassing released.

And when asked what he misses most about being a Microsoft developer, he answers:

I miss going for lunch with the people that I went for lunch with, and talking to the people that I worked with. Because they were a lot like me, they had similar interests, they had similar abilities, they were people like me. We went for lunch, we ate food, it was awesome, and then we talked about cool things. And we did that every day. And now I don't get to do that any more. I get to do it rarely, because I take guys out for lunch and stuff, but it's not the same. So that's really what I miss.

And I miss somebody always feeding me something interesting to do. Because now I have to go out and find something that's interesting to do on my own. And I can't make everything be monetarily remunerative...

An anonymous reader shares a report: One month ago the University of Minnesota was banned from contributing to the Linux kernel when it was revealed the university researchers were trying to intentionally submit bugs into the kernel via new patches as "hypocrite commits" as part of a questionable research paper. Linux kernel developers have finally finished reviewing all UMN.edu patches to address problematic merges to the kernel and also cleaning up / fixing their questionable patches. Sent in on Thursday by Greg Kroah-Hartman was char/misc fixes for 5.13-rc3. While char/misc fixes at this mid-stage of the kernel cycle tend to not be too exciting, this pull request has the changes for addressing the patches from University of Minnesota researchers. [...] Going by the umn.edu Git activity that puts 37 patches as having been reverted with this pull request. The reverts span from ALSA to the media subsystem, networking, and other areas. That is 37 reverts out of 150+ patches from umn.edu developers over the years.

Microsoft has open-sourced today a tool that can be used to build lab environments where security teams can simulate attacks and verify the detection effectiveness of Microsoft security products. The Record reports: Named SimuLand, the tool was specifically built to help security/IT teams that use Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365 Defender, Azure Defender, and Azure Sentinel. Currently, SimuLand comes with only one lab environment, specialized in detecting Golden SAML attacks. However, Microsoft said it's working on adding new ones. Community contributions are also welcomed, and the reason the project has been open-sourced on GitHub, with Microsoft hoping to get a helping hand from the tens of thousands of security teams that run its software.

"If you would like to share a new end-to-end attacker path, let us know by opening an issue in our GitHub repository, and we would be happy to collaborate and provide some resources to make it happen," Microsoft said today in a blog post. But Microsoft doesn't want only lab environments specialized in executing well-known techniques or adversary tradecraft. The OS maker is also encouraging the community to contribute improved detection rules for the attacks they're sharing, so everyone can benefit from the shared knowledge.

Microsoft today open-sourced a tool that can be used to build lab environments where security teams can simulate attacks and verify the detection effectiveness of Microsoft security products. From a report: Named SimuLand, the tool was specifically built to help security/IT teams that use Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365 Defender, Azure Defender, and Azure Sentinel. Currently, SimuLand comes with only one lab environment, specialized in detecting Golden SAML attacks.

However, Microsoft said it's working on adding new ones. Community contributions are also welcomed, and the reason the project has been open-sourced on GitHub, with Microsoft hoping to get a helping hand from the tens of thousands of security teams that run its software. "If you would like to share a new end-to-end attacker path, let us know by opening an issue in our GitHub repository, and we would be happy to collaborate and provide some resources to make it happen," Microsoft said today in a blog post. But Microsoft doesn't want only lab environments specialized in executing well-known techniques or adversary tradecraft. The OS maker is also encouraging the community to contribute improved detection rules for the attacks they're sharing, so everyone can benefit from the shared knowledge.

Linux on Chromebooks is finally coming out of beta with the release of Chrome OS 91, Google said at its developer I/O conference. From a report: The company had offered Linux apps on Chrome OS alongside Android apps, hoping to reach an audience of developers with IDEs and so on. However, the Linux Development Environment, as Google had dubbed it, had been in beta ever since while first launched. The company had added new features at a steady cadence, enabling things like GPU acceleration, better support for USB drives, and so on so people could be more productive while using Linux apps. Alongside Linux, Google also announced that it would be bringing Android 11 to Chromebooks. Technically, the update has already started with Chrome OS 90 for select Chromebooks, and it'll come with a host of new features including increased optimization of Android apps and a new dark theme. Google's increased support of Android is no coincidence. The company says that the operating system sees 3x increased usage of Android apps, and the new Android 11 update will see Android move to a virtual machine rather than the current container based method, making it easier to update in the future.

Today, Google and Samsung announced that they are merging Wear OS and Tizen in an effort to better compete against Apple's watchOS. "The resulting platform is currently being referred to simply as 'Wear,' though that might not be the final name," notes The Verge. From the report: Benefits of the joint effort include significant improvements to battery life, 30 percent faster loading times for apps, and smoother animations. It also simplifies life for developers and will create one central smartwatch OS for the Android platform. Google is also promising a greater selection of apps and watch faces than ever before. "All device makers will be able to add a customized user experience on top of the platform, and developers will be able to use the Android tools they already know and love to build for one platform and ecosystem," Google's Bjorn Kilburn wrote in a blog post.

Wired has more details on what's to come, including the tidbit that Samsung will stick with its popular rotating bezel on future devices -- but it's finished making Tizen-only smartwatches. There will also be a version of Google Maps that works standalone (meaning without your phone nearby) and a YouTube Music app that supports offline downloads. Oh, and Spotify will support offline downloads on Wear smartwatches, as well. Samsung confirmed that its next Galaxy Watch will run on this unified platform. And future "premium" Fitbit devices will also run the software.

At Google I/O 2021 today, Google confirmed that Android 12 is getting a huge new design. Ars Technica reports: Google calls the new design "Material You," and just like in the leaks, it's a UI that changes colors like a chameleon. For now, this design will only show up in Google Pixels, but Google says it will roll out across the ecosystem to the web, Chrome OS, smart displays, cars, watches, tablets, and every other Google form factor. The new interface is powered by a "color extraction" API that can pull the colors out of your wallpaper and apply them to the UI. This sounds exactly like the Palette API that was introduced in Android 5.0 (along with the original introduction of Material Design), but it's apparently a second swing at the color extraction idea, and Google is heavily using it in the UI now. The demo interfaces featured customized highlight colors, clock faces, widget backgrounds, and more, all matching the color of your wallpaper. Besides new colors, there are also tons of layout changes to the quick settings and notification panel. The first public beta of Android is now available. Google Pixel smartphones as far back as the Pixel 3 are eligible, as well as several devices from device-maker partners, including ASUS and OnePlus.

Microsoft today acknowledged that the company isn't going to release its Windows 10X operating system variant, as reported more than a week ago. Mary Jo Foley, writing at ZDNet: Don't be surprised if you missed the acknowledgement, as Microsoft buried it in its blog post about the rollout of the Windows 10 21H1 feature update -- which it published at the start of the Google I/O keynote. Toward the end of the post, under the "Our customer first focus" subheading, officials said Windows 10X wouldn't be coming to market in 2021, after all. Instead, Microsoft will be integrating some of the 10X "foundational" technologies into other parts of Windows and other products. Windows 10X was supposed to be Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS -- a simpler Windows 10 variant that was slated to debut first on PCs for education and the first line-worker market.