An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Windows' Sound Recorder app has gone through a few iterations since its initial release in Windows 3.0 back in 1990, when it launched as a simple app that could only record 60 seconds of audio at a time. But the app vanished altogether in Windows 10, replaced by a totally new app called Voice Recorder, which can record and trim basic sound recordings and save them as m4a files. Sound Recorder is now making a comeback, and Microsoft is currently testing a revamped version for Windows Insiders in the Dev channel. The company announced the redesign in a blog post summarizing Windows 11's updates to built-in Windows apps. The new Sound Recorder uses a two-column layout similar to Voice Recorder's, with playback and trimming controls to the right and a list of all the files you've recorded on the left. But it adds some old Sound Recorder features that disappeared from the app years ago, when it was boiled down to almost nothing in Windows Vista. The app has a waveform visualizer that appears during recording and playback, and you can once again choose to save or open files in multiple formats (including the default m4a, as well as mp3, wma, FLAC, and WAV). The new Sound Recorder can also adjust audio playback speed from 0.25x to 4 and set markers so you can easily jump from place to place within a large audio recording.

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Nvidia is publishing their Linux GPU kernel modules as open-source and will be maintaining it moving forward. Phoronix's Michael Larabel reports: To much excitement and a sign of the times, the embargo has just expired on this super-exciting milestone that many of us have been hoping to see for many years. Over the past two decades NVIDIA has offered great Linux driver support with their proprietary driver stack, but with the success of AMD's open-source driver effort going on for more than a decade, many have been calling for NVIDIA to open up their drivers. Their user-space software is remaining closed-source but as of today they have formally opened up their Linux GPU kernel modules and will be maintaining it moving forward. [...] This isn't limited to just Tegra or so but spans not only their desktop graphics but is already production-ready for data center GPU usage.

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At its I/O developer conference, Google today launched Google Wallet, a new Android and Wear OS app that will allow users to store things like credit cards, loyalty cards, digital IDs, transit passes, concert tickets, vaccination cards and more. TechCrunch reports: That's pretty straightforward, but from here on out, it gets a bit confusing. [...] [Back in 2018, Google Wallet was folded into Google Pay.] Currently, Google Pay is available in 42 markets, Google says. Because in 39 of those markets, Google Pay is still primarily a wallet, those users will simply see the Google Pay app update to the new Google Wallet app. But in the U.S. and Singapore, Google Pay will remain the payments-focused app while the Wallet app will exist in parallel to focus on storing your digital cards. Meanwhile, in India, Google says that "people will continue to use their Google Pay app they are familiar with today." "The Google Pay app will be a companion app to the Wallet," said Arnold Goldberg, the VP and GM of Payments at Google, who joined the company earlier this year after a long stint at PayPal. "Think of [the Google Pay app] as this higher value app that will be a place for you to make payments and manage money, whereas the wallet will really be this container for you to store your payment assets and your non-payment assets." Goldberg noted that Google decided to go this route because of the rapid digitization we've been seeing during the last two years of the pandemic.

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The Senate has voted to confirm privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya to the Federal Trade Commission. The confirmation secures a Democratic voting majority at the agency tasked by the Biden administration with investigating big tech companies like Facebook and Google over potential data privacy and competition violations. The Verge adds: Vice President Kamala Harris voted to break a 50-50 tie on the Senate floor to finalize Bedoya's confirmation. Bedoya will replace former Commissioner Rohit Chopra who left the FTC last year to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before his confirmation, Bedoya was a Georgetown law professor with a focus on privacy law, founding the university's Center on Privacy and Technology in 2014. In his academic career, Bedoya explored the disproportionate effects of surveillance on minority groups, particularly regarding facial recognition technology.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: President Nayib Bukele's Bitcoin gambit is becoming onerous for cash-strapped El Salvador but that isn't stopping him from adding to his stockpile. Bukele's bought 2,301 Bitcoins for the government since making them legal tender back in September, based on his announcements on Twitter. That includes a purchase of 500 coins yesterday as their price plunged below $31,000, extending a wild six-month sell-off. Those tokens are worth $74 million today. That's 28% less than the $103 million Bukele paid for them, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Bukele has shown himself to be a true believer in crypto, winning attention and admirers from around the world in the process, and says he trades the nation's stockpile of coins on his phone. The 40-year-old has said he will push ahead with plans to issue a $1 billion blockchain bond to fund the construction of Bitcoin City, an income and capital gains tax-free jurisdiction he hopes to create on the country's coast. Bukele tweeted pictures on Monday of a mockup for the planned city, which includes an international airport. It would use geothermal energy from a nearby volcano. According to JPMorgan's emerging market bond index, El Salvador's dollar bonds have pluged 24% this year, "as concern mounts that the government will fail to pay back $800 million of notes that come due in January," notes Bloomberg. "Moody's cut the government's credit rating to Caa3 last week, citing an increased risk of default."

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Alphabet's Google, which failed to find a consumer audience for its internet-connected glasses about a decade ago, on Wednesday presented a prototype of augmented reality glasses aimed at the general public. Bloomberg: In a brief demonstration at its annual I/O developer conference, the company showed glasses using an AR version of Google Translate. The company didn't say when the glasses would be ready for consumers, but Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai indicated Google has a "long way to go" before releasing them. "It's important we design in a way that's built for the real world and doesn't take away from it," Pichai said.

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Google announced several new gadgets during its I/O developer conference on Wednesday, including its long-awaited Pixel Watch, a new budget Pixel 6a phone and headphones. It also teased its flagship Pixel 7 phone, which is coming this fall. From a report: The Google Pixel Watch offers features similar to the Apple Watch's and sports a refined and sleek look that could appeal to customers who use Android instead of the iPhone, which it doesn't work with. It will integrate Fitbit's technology, allowing it to pull on years of research and development from the fitness startup it acquired last year. The Fitbit tech will let users track their sleep, heart rate and workouts. The watch runs Google's Wear OS software that lets users do things such as check messages and download music. Users can also get directions with Google Maps or connect it with their smart home devices, so they can, for example, change their thermostat temperature or make sure the lights are turned off. Google will release its latest budget Pixel phone this summer. The Pixel 6a has mostly the same design as the Pixel 6, but will be slightly smaller and cost $449. Google promised an all-day battery that can last up to 72 hours when in the Extreme Battery Saver mode, which it said is a first for Pixel phones. It also uses Google Tensor, so the budget phone will have the same power as the more expensive Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. [...] Google teased the new Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro flagship phones. They'll use the next generation of the Google Tensor chip and will ship with Android 13. The company didn't provide pricing, but the Pixel 6 had been targeted at the midrange market with a $599 starting price, while the 6 Pro started at $899.

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Offering a sneak preview of the Pixel 7 wasn't enough, so Google's really leaning in. Today at I/O, the company announced that it's returning to the tablet business with a new device set for, get this, a 2023 launch. From a report: "Normally we wouldn't tease a new product before it's ready," said Google's hardware chief Rick Osterloh, "but there's so much amazing energy around tablets in the developer community that we wanted to bring you all into the loop." The Pixel Tablet is going to be something of a spiritual successor to 2018's Pixel Slate, which the company quietly discontinued last year. Like the Pixel Book, the hardware was nice, but in a world full of super cheap Chromebooks, Google never really nailed the "why."

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Alphabet's Google unveiled a series of planned upgrades to its search and maps services revealing the company's augmented reality ambitions -- and its appeal to a generation of internet users drifting away from the company. From a report: The new features include ways for people to search for nearby items using images and identify physical objects with their smartphone cameras. On Google Maps, the company promised a way for people to explore detailed 3D digital models of landmarks and neighborhoods before setting foot in person. Google shared the plans on Wednesday for the first day of its annual I/O developer conference held near its Mountain View, California headquarters. Google is working to keep its products relevant and growing as users' needs evolve beyond text. "Search should be something that you can do anywhere, in any way you want, using any of your senses," Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's senior vice president and product chief, said in an interview. Google's core search advertising business has continued to grow steadily during the pandemic, despite recent middling financial results. Yet the I/O announcements underscored nascent threats Google sees to its flagship services. People in emerging markets are more likely to search with voice features than typing, which has driven Google to invest more in its voice assistant feature.

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Do Kwon, the CEO of Terra creator Terraform Labs, was one of the pseudonymous co-founders behind the failed algorithmic stablecoin Basis Cash, CoinDesk reported Wednesday. From the report: Basis Cash (BAC) was a closely watched revival in decentralized finance (DeFi) circles when it launched on Ethereum in late 2020, just before the launch of terraUSD (UST), Terra's flagship stablecoin. Like UST, BAC sought to maintain a $1 peg through code, not collateral. But it failed: The token of this long-abandoned project never achieved its target of dollar parity, sank below $1 in early 2021 and was trading well below 1 cent on Wednesday.

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The European Commission has proposed controversial new regulation that would require chat apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger to selectively scan users' private messages for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and "grooming" behavior. The proposal is similar to plans mooted by Apple last year but, say critics, much more invasive. From a report: After a draft of the regulation leaked earlier this week, privacy experts condemned it in the strongest terms. "This document is the most terrifying thing I've ever seen," tweeted cryptography professor Matthew Green. "It describes the most sophisticated mass surveillance machinery ever deployed outside of China and the USSR. Not an exaggeration." Jan Penfrat of digital advocacy group European Digital Rights (EDRi) echoed the concern, saying, "This looks like a shameful general #surveillance law entirely unfitting for any free democracy." (A comparison of the PDFs shows differences between the leaked draft and final proposal are cosmetic only.) The regulation would establish a number of new obligations for "online service providers" -- a broad category that includes app stores, hosting companies, and any provider of "interpersonal communications service."

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Hidden away in Coinbase Global's disappointing first-quarter earnings report -- in which the U.S.'s largest cryptocurrency exchange reported a quarterly loss of $430 million and a 19% drop in monthly users -- is an update on the risks of using Coinbase's service that may come as a surprise to its millions of users. In the event the crypto exchange goes bankrupt, Coinbase says, its users might lose all the cryptocurrency stored in their accounts too. Coinbase said in its earnings report Tuesday that it holds $256 billion in both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies on behalf of its customers. Yet the exchange noted that in the event it ever declared bankruptcy, "the crypto assets we hold in custody on behalf of our customers could be subject to bankruptcy proceedings." Coinbase users would become "general unsecured creditors," meaning they have no right to claim any specific property from the exchange in proceedings. Their funds would become inaccessible.

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Following a day in which teetering stablecoin TerraUST (UST) bounced around $.90, it resumed its free-fall overnight to approach $0.30 before recovering partly to $.43 this morning. From a report: However, this performance could be considered downright bullish when compared to LUNA, the token designed to maintain its $1 peg, which has now fallen below $2. LUNA is down a staggering 98% in the past five days, which has seen its market capitalization lose $25 billion this week. Today attention will focus on whether the Luna Foundation Guard, led by founder Do Kwon, will be about to recover from this downward spiral. The Block reported yesterday that the team was in talks to obtain $1 billion in additional collateral from unnamed hedge funds and market makers. However, that has not come to fruition.

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Coinbase halted trading service in India because of "informal pressure" from the Reserve Bank of India, the crypto exchange's chief executive said on Tuesday, addressing the notable Indian episode for the first time in a month. From a report: The Nasdaq-listed firm launched its eponymous crypto trading service in India to much fanfare on April 7. The app allowed users in the world's second largest internet market to buy crypto tokens using UPI, a highly popular Indian payments infrastructure built by a coalition of retail banks. But just three days after the launch, the firm rolled back the service without an explanation. The move followed a strange statement made by the National Payments Corporation of India, the governing body that oversees UPI in the country, in which it refused to acknowledge UPI support on Coinbase's app. Asked about the Indian episode on the company's earnings call, Coinbase co-founder and chief executive Brian Armstrong said Coinbase disabled UPI "because of some informal pressure from the Reserve Bank of India." Armstrong pointed out that cryptocurrency trading is not illegal in India -- in fact, the South Asian nation just recently started to tax it -- but there are "elements in the government there, including at Reserve Bank of India, who don't seem to be as positive on it. And so they -- in the press, it's been called a 'shadow ban,' basically, they're applying soft pressure behind the scenes to try to disable some of these payments, which might be going through UPI," he said.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Scientists have discovered evidence that a key rare resource, called helium-3, is potentially ten times more common on Earth than previously known -- though the source of all this extra supply remains mysterious, reports a new study. The finding is important because helium-3 could serve as a foundation of limitless clean power for our civilization, but has been seen as inaccessible since it is largely found in outer space locations, especially the Moon. Helium-3 is an isotope of helium, which means it contains the same number of protons as this common element but a different number of neutrons. This isotope is considered a potentially powerful energy source for future fusion reactors, making it a star of science fiction as well as a sought-out resource in the real world. However, while small amounts of the substance are produced by geological processes and from the fallout of nuclear weapons testing, there is thought to be very little helium-3 available on Earth. Now, scientists led by Benjamin Birner, a postdoctoral scholar in geosciences at the University of California San Diego, have captured evidence for a previously unknown abundance of helium-3 in the atmosphere, which "presents a major puzzle in the helium-3 budget" and "motivates a search for missing helium-3 sources on Earth, especially since helium-3 is considered an important, yet scarce, resource," according to a study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience. Known sources of helium-3 on Earth only account for 10 percent of the surplus, the researchers said. Birner and his colleagues serendipitously uncovered this inferred surplus of helium-3 (3He) while tackling another challenging problem: measuring the overall rise in atmospheric helium as a result of human consumption of fossil fuels. The team pioneered a first-of-its-kind technique for estimating these anthropogenic helium emissions by examining another isotope, helium-4 (4He), which in turn led to the perplexing conclusion that there is some unknown source of helium-3 on our planet. "We only measured the change in atmospheric 4He," Birner said in an email. "However, previous work by other researchers indicates that the helium isotopic ratio of the atmosphere (3He/4He) is roughly stable. Together these observations imply an increase in atmospheric 3He that matches the rise in 4He or we would see a change in the atmospheric isotope ratio." Helium-3 could be the ideal fuel for nuclear fusion, a potential energy source that mimics the same process that powers stars. Though nuclear fusion may not materialize as a practical power source for decades, assuming it is feasible at all, its potential to provide clean and limitless energy to the global human population makes it a tantalizing area of study. To that end, scientists across fields are likely to be interested in locating this unexplained surplus of helium-3 on Earth that has been implied by the new research. "That increase of 3He is quite puzzling because we don't have a good explanation for the source of this 3He so far," Birner noted. "It's quite an important puzzle to solve also because 3He is an important and scarce resource for nuclear fusion reactors. Based on the reported uncertainties in previous studies of the atmospheric 3He/4He trend, the buildup of 3He looks significant, but our study clearly motivates a closer look at the atmospheric 3He/4He trend."

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The world is creeping closer to the warming threshold international agreements are trying to prevent, with nearly a 50-50 chance that Earth will temporarily hit that temperature mark within the next five years, teams of meteorologists across the globe predicted. NPR reports: With human-made climate change continuing, there's a 48% chance that the globe will reach a yearly average of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels of the late 1800s at least once between now and 2026, a bright red signal in climate change negotiations and science, a team of 11 different forecast centers predicted for the World Meteorological Organization late Monday. The odds are inching up along with the thermometer. Last year, the same forecasters put the odds at closer to 40% and a decade ago it was only 10%. The team, coordinated by the United Kingdom's Meteorological Office, in their five-year general outlook said there is a 93% chance that the world will set a record for hottest year by the end of 2026. They also said there's a 93% chance that the five years from 2022 to 2026 will be the hottest on record. Forecasters also predict the devastating fire-prone megadrought in the U.S. Southwest will keep going. "We're going to see continued warming in line with what is expected with climate change," said UK Met Office senior scientist Leon Hermanson, who coordinated the report.

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ellithligraw writes: Analytics company Pixalate found that there are over 1.5 million abandoned iOS and Android apps. This analysis comes after Apple's announcement of changes to their App Store for abandoned apps, prompting a discussion on the Web. "Pixalate claims they crawled the App Store and Play Store to analyze all apps available for download based on their last update to determine their degree of 'abandonment,'" reports InfoQ. "Based on the previous definitions, Pixalate found over 650k iOS apps and about 870k Android apps to qualify as abandoned apps (haven't been updated in over two years). Of those, just about 180k iOS apps and 130k Android apps qualify as super-abandoned (haven't been updated in at least five years)." Note that according to Statista there are 4 million iOS apps, and 3 million Android apps available.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ScienceAlert: The oceans that surround us are transforming. As our climate changes, the world's waters are shifting too, with abnormalities evident not only in the ocean's temperature, but also its structure, currents, and even its color. As these changes manifest, the usually stable environment of the ocean is becoming more unpredictable and erratic, and in some ways the phenomenon is akin to the ocean losing its memory, scientists suggest. "Ocean memory, the persistence of ocean conditions, is a major source of predictability in the climate system beyond weather time scales," researchers explain in a new paper led by first author and climate researcher Hui Shi from the Farallon Institute in Petaluma, California. "We show that ocean memory, as measured by the year-to-year persistence of sea surface temperature anomalies, is projected to steadily decline in the coming decades over much of the globe." In the research, the team studied sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the shallow top layer of the ocean, called the upper-ocean mixed layer (MLD). Despite the MLD's relative shallowness -- extending only to a depth of about 50 meters down from the ocean's surface -- this upper layer of water exhibits a lot of persistence over time in terms of thermal inertia, especially compared to the variations seen in the atmosphere above. In the future, however, modeling suggests that this 'memory' effect of thermal inertia in the upper ocean is set to decline globally over the rest of the century, with dramatically greater variations in temperature predicted over coming decades. According to the researchers, shoaling effects in the MLD will introduce greater levels of water-mixing in the upper ocean, effectively thinning out the top layer. This is expected to lower the ocean's capacity for thermal inertia, rendering the upper ocean more susceptible to random temperature anomalies. Just what that means for marine wildlife is unclear, but the researchers note that "consequential impacts on populations are likely," although some species are expected to fare better than others in terms of adaptation. On another note, the ocean memory decline is expected to make it significantly harder for scientists to forecast upcoming ocean dynamics, reducing reliable lead times for all sorts of predictions related to SSTs. This will hinder our ability to project monsoons, marine heatwaves (MHWs), and periods of extreme weather, among other things. The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.

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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) on Tuesday introduced a bill to regulate the volume of commercials shown on streaming platforms. The Hill reports: The bill is known as the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Modernization Act. It would modernize policies regarding ads on streaming services, saying that "the volume of commercials on streaming services cannot be louder than regular programming," according to Eshoo. It would also ramp up the Federal Communications Commission's ability to investigate and enforce violations of the original CALM Act and require a study into its effectiveness. Eshoo added that since she and Whitehouse created the original CALM Act, streaming service providers have "recreated the problem of loud ads because the old law doesn't apply to them." "Today, we're updating the legislation for the benefit of consumers who are tired of diving for the mute button at every commercial break," Eshoo added.

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PowerShell inventor Jeffrey Snover has aired some grievances about how his indispensable tool once got him demoted. The Register reports: The Microsoft Technical Fellow discussed the incident in a weekend Twitter thread that started when controversial investor Peter Thiel discussed the virtues of courage. "Courage is a key characteristic of future leaders and previous employees," Snover joked in response to Thiel's musings. He also asserted that "many people focus on getting their boss to pat them on the head rather than address problems." Snover said he was urged by friend Kevin Kean -- who served as director of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) in the mid 2000s -- not to reveal PowerShell, as it may not well be received. This is not the first time Snover has revealed his demotion, but he hasn't previously discussed his profound embarrassment -- or that he kept it secret from everyone other than his wife. "I never mentioned it to anyone for over a decade until I got promoted to Distinguished Engineer," tweeted Snover, who was given the honor in March 2009. Snover then contrasted Microsoft's policy for company-related passion projects to Google's famous 20 percent rule.

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