Chip companies like Qualcomm, Nvidia, and AMD are all either planning or said to be planning another attempt at making Arm chips for the consumer PC market. Qualcomm is leading the charge in mid-2024 with its Snapdragon X Elite and a new CPU architecture called Oryon. And Reuters reported earlier this week that Nvidia and AMD are targeting a 2025 release window for their own Arm chips for Windows PCs. If these companies successfully get their chips into PCs, it would mostly come at Intel’s expense. But Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger doesn’t seem worried about it yet, as he said on the company’s most recent earnings call. The biggest issue for Windows on ARM will be, as always, application compatibility. ARM applications haven’t exactly been pouring in for Windows, and translation layers in Windows haven’t been earth-shattering either. As long as this problem remains, Intel indeed has little to worry about. I’m just excited there’s finally some movement in ARM laptops, because Linux is exceptionally well positioned for the transition to ARM. Every major distribution has a fully functional ARM version, with pretty much full package repository support. There really is very little difference in running desktop Linux on ARM (or even POWER9, for that matter). The power of open source.

While Qualcomm has become wildly successful in the Arm SoC market for Android smartphones, their efforts to parlay that into success in other markets has eluded them so far. The company has produced several generations of chips for Windows-on-Arm laptops, and while each has incrementally improved on matters, it’s not been enough to dislodge a highly dominant Intel. And while the lack of success of Windows-on-Arm is far from solely being Qualcomm’s fault – there’s a lot to be said for the OS and software – silicon has certainly played a part. To make serious inroads on the market, it’s not enough to produce incrementally better chips – Qualcomm needs to make a major leap in performance. Now, after nearly three years of hard work, Qualcomm is getting ready to do just that. This morning, the company is previewing their upcoming Snapdragon X Elite SoC, their next-generation Arm SoC designed for Windows devices. Based on a brand-new Arm CPU core design from their Nuvia subsidiary dubbed “Oryon”, the Snapdragon X Elite is to be the tip of the iceberg for a new generation of Qualcom SoC designs. Not only is it the heart and soul of Qualcomm’s most important Windows-on-Arm SoC to date, but it will eventually be in smartphones and a whole lot more. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. For now let’s focus on the Snapdragon X Elite SoC and the Oryon cores underpinning it. Some more in-depth information about Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X Elite, this time from AnandTech.

A browser(/web) engine essentially takes in a URL(/etc) and gives you it rendered into a window for you to view and interact with. <shadow> does this too, almost entirely from scratch, made in JS. It runs in your browser! Node backend soon™ too? The host browser(/etc) is only used for networking (fetch) and renderer backend (&lt;canvas&gt;). I feel like I have opinions, but I can’t express them. This is equal parts genius and madness.

The device looks like a conventional computer monitor but opens up like a clam. The screen itself is a common flat panel liquid crystal display or LCD, a nearly translucent screen that is typically lit from behind by powered lights. For Eazeye, the backing lights are replaced with a bright white carbon fiber panel that can tip backwards up to 45 degrees. The panel bounces ambient light from the monitor’s surroundings through the LCD screen, which, under the right lighting conditions, provides enough illumination for the screen to be used like normal. I can see this working quite well in certain environments, like offices and well-lit rooms. It sure is a very interesting idea, and I like the design, too.

The Linux Mint project has announced that they’re finally working on bringing the Cinnamon desktop environment over to Wayland. The work started on Wayland. As mentioned earlier this year, this was identified as one of the major challenges our project had to tackle in the mid to long term. Priority had been given to ISO tools and Secureboot over new features for 21.3 already, we felt it was time to invest some resources into Wayland as well. We wanted to have a clear picture of the work involved, so we wanted to start now. In terms of timing we don’t think we need Wayland support to be fully ready (i.e. to be a better Cinnamon option for most people) before 2026 (Mint 23.x). That leaves us 2 years to identify and to fix all the issues. It’s something we’ll continue to work on. Whenever it happens, assuming it does, we’ll consider switching defaults. We’ll use the best tools to do the job and provide the best experience. Today that means Xorg. Tomorrow it might mean Wayland. We’ll be ready and compatible with both. I respect this position. Linux Mint has always been just a bit more conservative than many of the other desktop-focused distributions, and this has earned it a well-deserved reputation for being stable and reliable. I use Linux Mint on my gaming PC for that very reason (albeit with the Xanmod kernel) – during the little time I have to play games, I don’t want to deal with issues arising from using bleeding edge software.

Microsoft is starting to roll out new changes to Windows Ink that let you write anywhere you can type in Windows 11. After months of previewing the changes, the handwriting-to-text conversion now works inside search boxes and other elements of Windows 11 where you’d normally type your input. Microsoft has started rolling out the KB5031455 non-security update as a preview to Windows 11 users yesterday. You simply have to head to Windows Update and toggle the “Get the latest updates as soon as they’re available” setting to get this update before it’s available fully in the coming weeks. While my handwriting is not great and I never use it for any computing tasks, stuff like this has always been pretty cool. Microsoft has been working on this since Windows 3.1 for Pen Computing 1.0 from 1992, and the recognition is actually very, very good. Being able to input handwriting straight into text fields will be a boon for artists and note-takers who use Windows on tablets, though, so it’s definitely worth installing this update if you belong to that group.

Virtualization of Microsoft Windows 9x systems is a bit problematic due to 2 major bugs: TLB invalidation bug and CPU speed limit bug. This program contains a set of patches to fix these bugs, and can be booted from a floppy on a virtual machine. It either applies the patch to the installed system, or it patches the installation files in order to create (relatively) bug-free installation media. A must-have for your Windows 95/98/ME virtual machines.

But even without filing lawsuits, artists have a chance to fight back against AI using tech. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive look at a new open source tool still in development called Nightshade, which can be added by artists to their imagery before they upload it to the web, altering pixels in a way invisible to the human eye, but that “poisons” the art for any AI models seeking to train on it. Excellent. This is exactly the kind of clever thinking we need to stop major corporations from stealing everyone’s creative works for their own further gain. I hope we can develop these poisons further, to the point of making these “AI” tools entirely useless. Get permission, or get poisoned.

So you ended up with this JavaScript quirk where it was possible to create unique URLs that ran a bit of JavaScript on whatever page you happened to be looking at. It could even make changes to that page. Move things around. Replace words. Open links. And pretty early on, people realized that these JavaScript URLs were also bookmarkable, just like any other URL. And, crucially, easily shareable as links. I had almost forgotten about these things.

As generative AI models become more widely available, you may be integrating them into your apps. In line with Google’s commitment to responsible AI practices, we want to help ensure AI-generated content is safe for people and that their feedback is incorporated. Early next year, we’ll be requiring developers to provide the ability to report or flag offensive AI-generated content without needing to exit the app. You should utilize these reports to inform content filtering and moderation in your apps – similar to the in-app reporting system required today under our User Generated Content policies. I like that this will be a system-wide requirement, which will slowly make it a common sight on Android, and thus, something users expect and know how to work with. In the same blog post announcing this new generative “AI” policy, Google also announced tighter rules around certain broad application permissions, limiting full-screen notifications, and more/

Apple is releasing a slew of updates for its latest operating systems today, including iOS and iPadOS 17.1, macOS Sonoma 14.1, watchOS 10.1, and others. The company is also releasing security updates for a few previous-generation operating systems, so that people who aren’t ready to upgrade (and older devices that can’t upgrade) will still be protected from new exploits. If you have a bunch of Apple devices, it’s going to be a busy day. You might also want to take a look at your Apple subscriptions, because the company massively increased its prices across the board without advance notice.

A director from the White House announced that Apple plans to significantly expand access to device repairs for independent repair shops and consumers across the United States. The move is part of the Biden administration’s push for “right to repair” reforms. According to a statement by National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard (via Reuters), Apple will make parts, tools, and documentation needed for repairs available to independent repair shops and consumers nationwide. This will allow third-party technicians and do-it-yourselfers to fix Apple products at fair and reasonable prices quickly. There’s going to be a gotcha. With Apple, there always is.

The big question coming up is how Google’s focus on AI will impact that core business. Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience is still only available on an opt-in basis, so we don’t yet know how much it’ll impact the company’s ad business. Google is already moving to head off that problem. On Google’s earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company would be experimenting with new formats native to the way SGE works — the company has already shown off some ideas — so perhaps we’ll start to see some of those formats debut in the coming weeks and months. Later in the call, chief business officer Philipp Schindler added that “it’s extremely important to us that in this new experience, advertisers still have the opportunity to reach potential customers along their dsearch journeys.” This is not news.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was interviewed by Business Insider, and when asked about his greatest strategic mistake, the answer was obvious. The decision I think a lot of people talk about – and one of the most difficult decisions I made when I became CEO —was our exit of what I’ll call the mobile phone as defined then. In retrospect, I think there could have been ways we could have made it work by perhaps reinventing the category of computing between PCs, tablets, and phones. Microsoft’s failures to anticipate the mobile market is legendary at this point, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Microsoft CEO state they should’ve tried harder and stuck with it. I was a huge fan of Windows Phone 7 and 8, and even imported the first devices running those platforms from the US, because the platforms were not available in The Netherlands at the time. However, Windows Phone was a dead end. Even regular Windows has a big application problem, and it was a millions of times worse on Windows Phone. I doubt any amount of money or development resources would’ve changed the fate of Windows Phone. It would’ve been good for the industry as a whole had Microsoft not failed, but the reality of it is that Android and iOS were already so far ahead it was impossible for anyone, even someone as large and wealthy as Microsoft, to catch up. Add to that the countless terrible business and technological decisions the company made with Windows Phone, and it just wasn’t meant to be. I understand that Nadella pines for the slice of the money pie they’ve could’ve had, but I doubt he sincerely thinks things could’ve turned out any differently.