Technology

Microsoft has admitted it was wrong about open source, after the company battled it and Linux for years at the height of its desktop domination. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously branded Linux “a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches” back in 2001. Microsoft president Brad Smith now believes the company was wrong about open source. “Microsoft was on the wrong side of history when open source exploded at the beginning of the century, and I can say that about me personally,” said Smith in a recent MIT event. Smith has been at Microsoft for more than 25 years and was one of the company’s senior lawyers during its battles with open-source software. Microsoft is now the single biggest contributor to open-source projects in the world “Th...

Huawei rotating chairman Guo Ping has hit back at the US government’s stricter export controls intended to stop the Chinese tech giant from obtaining essential chips, following reports that its biggest supplier has already cut it off. “We still haven’t figured it out,” Guo said on stage at Huawei’s annual analyst summit. “The US government still persists in attacking Huawei, but what will that bring to the world?” “In its relentless pursuit to tighten its stranglehold on our company, the US government has decided to proceed and completely ignore the concerns of many companies and industry associations,” Huawei adds in an official statement. “This decision was arbitrary and pernicious, and threatens to undermine the entire industry worldwide. This new rule will impact the expansion, mainten...

Apple’s head of retail Deidre O’Brien has posted a letter on the company’s website detailing how it plans to safely restart operations at its retail stores. Apple shut all of its stores outside Greater China in March as COVID-19 spread worldwide; all the Greater China stores reopened that same month, while Apple is still in the process of taking careful steps elsewhere. “Our commitment is to only move forward with a reopening once we’re confident we can safely return to serving customers from our stores,” O’Brien writes. “We look at every available piece of data — including local cases, near and long‑term trends, and guidance from national and local health officials. These are not decisions we rush into — and a store opening in no way means that we won’t take the preventative step of closi...

The US Secret Service says it is investigating a Nigerian crime ring that has been using Americans’ stolen identities to file fraudulently for unemployment benefits, according to Krebs on Security. Authorities say members of the ring were able to exploit weak security measures within many states’ unemployment systems at a time when millions of Americans are applying for benefits. The agency sent a memo to field offices late last week which said the Nigeria-based ring appeared to be using a “substantial” database of stolen personal information, much of it from first responders, government personnel, and school employees, according to Krebs. The Secret Service said the fraudsters’ primary target was Washington State, with evidence of other attacks in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, O...

If you’re caught up on all your binge watching (my current obsession is The Good Fight because a) Diane’s wardrobe and b) what the hell is Memo 618?!) and need something new to stream, here are five options coming to streaming platforms this week, including a new standup show from Patton Oswalt and the season two premiere of Homecoming starring Janelle Monae. The Great (Hulu, available now) Polygon’s Samantha Nelson says this mostly-not-historically-accurate story of the young Catherine the Great is “a Mean Girls costume-drama feel, while upping the stakes with enough violence, sex, and intrigue to satisfy Game of Thrones fans.” Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult star. [embedded content] Hightown (Starz, May 17th) I am super looking forward to this police drama on Starz, if only to get a few ...

Dyson’s canceled electric vehicle was known internally as the N526, would have had a 600-mile range per charge and could go from zero to 62 mph in 4.8 seconds, company founder James Dyson said in an interview with the (London) Sunday Times. James Dyson says he even drove the prototype of the SUV-style vehicle, meant to rival Tesla’s electric vehicles, “secretly in a screened-off compound.” The vacuum cleaner company’s short-lived electric car project started in 2017, and at one point some 600 people at Dyson were working on it. In 2018, Dyson said it would build a manufacturing plant in Singapore to make the EVs, and was also working on developing solid-state batteries for the vehicle. Sir James Dyson, Britain’s richest man, spent £500m developing an electric car to rival Tesla’s. Then he ...

Users of videoconferencing platform Zoom are reporting problems hosting and joining meetings and the company is investigating, according to the its status page. “Our team is investigating the root cause of issues joining Zoom Meetings. These issues appear to be limited to a subset of users,” according to an update just before 10AM ET. Zoom users in the UK first began noticing widespread outages earlier today, although free accounts appeared to be functioning normally. Some churches have started using Zoom to hold virtual Sunday services during the coronavirus pandemic. Hi there – We have received reports that Zoom users may be experiencing issues hosting and joining meetings. Please see https://t.co/aqz5nS7fZY for updates. — Zoom (@zoom_us) May 17, 2020 Overall Zoom usage has increas...

All across the country, people are finding ways to adapt to our new stay-at-home normal, and for some, that means adopting a furry friend. Shelters in the US have reported an increase in adoptions since the start of the pandemic, some of which have had to create waitlists or pause applications until they can rescue more animals. Petfinder.com, which works with shelters and rescue organizations throughout the country, saw adoption inquiries jump 122 percent between March 15th and April 15th. It’s led to a unique set of issues that many shelters haven’t faced before: juggling increased applications for pet adoptions and foster homes while having to adjust to their new circumstances. Many rescue organizations have had to close their adoption and medical facilities, and with that change has co...

A Friday letter from Amazon to members of Congress looking into the company’s third-party seller practices was “unacceptable,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) tweeted Saturday. At issue is an Amazon executive’s testimony at a hearing last July, where he said the company doesn’t access information from third-party sellers on its platform to make competing items. But the Wall Street Journal reported last month that Amazon employees regularly used information from the sellers to develop the company’s private-label products. “Members from both parties have serious questions about Amazon’s business practices and its honesty with the Committee,” Nadler tweeted. “We will not permit stonewalling of our investigation, by Jeff Bezos or anyone.” Amazon vice president of public ...

Edison Mail has rolled back a software update that apparently let some users of its iOS app see emails from strangers’ accounts. Several Edison users contacted The Verge to report seeing the glitch after they applied the update, which was meant to allow users to sync data across devices. Reader Matthew Grzybowski said after the update he had more than 100 unread messages from the UK-based email account of a stranger. He didn’t have to enter any credentials to see the emails, Grzybowski added. Others on Twitter reported similar issues: The company said it was a bug, not a security breach, and that the issue appeared limited to users of the iOS app. “Ten hours ago a software update was rolled out to a small percentage of our user base. Some of these users who received the update are experien...

The Gigabyte Aero 15 is a laptop aimed at designers and creative professionals. But when I first saw the thing, I didn’t believe that. It looks nothing like any laptop that comes to mind when I think of “creators” (the slim and sleek MacBook Pros, XPS 15s, Surface Books, and Zenbooks of the world). The Aero is a beast. It’s 15.6 inches wide and 4.4 pounds. It has a bright LED logo on its lid, large visible vents on the back and bottom, and a colorful RGB keyboard that will turn heads from across the office. This is a gaming laptop, I thought on my first day using it. Designers won’t want this. But I’ve made myself stop thinking that because the reality is: that’s a stereotype. There’s no reason that big, flashy devices should be reserved for gamers; that’s just a design trend companies dec...

You can get two of Amazon’s Echo Show 5 smart displays for $90 today at Best Buy. To break down why exactly that’s a deal worth highlighting, that’s the regular price for just one of them. This model has a 5.5-inch display, which makes it easier to fit just about anywhere inside your home. And since this deal includes a second display, you can choose to set it up in a different part of your living space, or you can gift it to someone who you’d like to keep in contact with via its built-in camera. We think that the Echo Show 8, Amazon’s eight-inch display, is the one most people should buy due to its bigger screen and more powerful sound. Though, in terms of functionality, they’re identical — the Echo Show 5 is just tinier and thus, it’s better suited as a smart alarm clock than an entertai...