Welcome aboard Technic Flight 330 with non-stop service
from the chip shortage to whatever insane new robot is doing martial arts.
Fasten your seatbelts, stow your hot takes, and prepare for a rapid descent into tech news.
Love you. Microsoft has confirmed major improvements
are coming to Windows 11's search after years of complaints and anguish,
gnashing of teeth. Search wasn't explicitly part of Microsoft's
recent Windows 11 overhaul announcement, but after users took to Twitter to point out
how broken and cluttered it still is, referencing the meme of how searching terminal
is a crapshoot between finding the actual terminal and the critically reviled 2018 neo-noir thriller terminal,
which you have on your PC for some reason, or you don't and Edge thinks that's what you want.
Windows shell product head, Tali Roth, confirmed that search fixes are also in the works.
She said, a lot of improvements are coming with the goal of making search simpler and less distracting,
including making installed apps appear instantly.
Can you keep in core system tools always discoverable
and ranking local files higher than web suggestions?
Truly revolutionary. Microsoft also says that they're going to plague
their own OS with progressive web apps less
and move more towards building more 100% native Windows 11 apps.
Rudy Hoyn, a partner architect at Microsoft, announced he's hiring for the team that's going to do this
and confirmed the apps will be 100% native
since even flagship tools like Clipchamp are currently web apps.
Don't even get me started on teams. This all sounds great,
but Microsoft might wanna figure out how to ship a working update first
because their last update yet again had to be pulled after it somehow shipped
without all of its files. Real dog ate my homework energy
happening over there at Windows. It was right here.
The White House launched an app last Friday,
sparking a massive viral panic over the weekend.
The controversy was triggered when a researcher decompiled the code
and put out a blog post reporting that there was a third-party GPS tracking pipeline
baked into the app, configured to pull your location every four and a half minutes,
which wouldn't seem that weird for an app that asks location permission,
but why does the White House app need that? Initial reports took the findings at face value
with headlines claiming the app was actively tracking users exact locations
and sinking them to a third-party server, but follow-up analysis
by multiple independent developers confirmed the GPS code is dormant
and was never actually invoked, summoned, if you will.
The app was positioned in a White House blog post
as a direct line to the administration, delivering unparalleled access
to Trump administration live streams, press releases, his private discord, I don't know.
It's mostly just kind of an unnecessary portal that opens external websites.
Android Authority described the social tab as buggy with constant stuttering,
and it includes a button to text President Trump
that auto-populates the chat with greatest president ever
before trying to sign you up for a marketing blast, in case you weren't sure what was going on here.
White House communications director Steven Chung encouraged users to download it,
saying users would find some little Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the app.
If you find them all, you'll get to pre-order a framed picture of the Trump phone,
because that's all it's gonna be is a picture. Swift, Apple's coding language,
can now officially be used to build Android apps,
which is actually kind of a bigger deal than you might think. The Swift 6.3 update includes the first stable version
of a toolkit that lets developers write Android apps using the same language they've been using
to make iPhone apps for over a decade. This update was actually part of a community effort.
A dedicated Android work group spent about a year
getting it from an early preview to an official release. Now, this doesn't mean Android is suddenly
running on Apple code or anything. Android apps are still mostly built
in Google's preferred languages, Kotlin and Java.
But Swift now includes built-in translator tools
that let devs drop chunks of their existing iPhone app code
into an Android project without rewriting everything from scratch.
Gandalf voice. Welcome, iPhone developers.
Let me tell you of a language that was in use before you even learned to touch type.
The toolkit is mostly useful for sharing the backend logic between platforms.
So if you're a developer who already built something for iPhone and wants it on Android 2,
this update just saved you a lot of busy work. I'm pretty sure the Quickbits have climbed out
under the wing and are ripping pieces off the plank and someone please tell the pilot we're gonna go down.
Ah! GitHub co-pilot got caught sneaking ads
into developers' code submissions because apparently they thought that was helpful.
Writing code? Hmm, do you need a vacuum?
Microsoft's favorite slop child was quietly inserting promotional tips,
including plugs for a third-party app called Raycast
into pull request descriptions and over 11,000 were found with the exact same ad copy.
GitHub's VP of DevRelations confirmed the behavior and said they've disabled it, calling it, quote, icky.
You know, things are bad when your own platform gives you the ick.
Sony, the company that literally invented the memory stick,
just stopped accepting orders for the majority of its lineup of SD
and CF Express memory cards in Japan, making them the global memory shortages
most ironic victim. They get a trophy, I think.
The suspension covers everything from high-end, tough branded cards down to basic models
with no timeline for when they'll come back. Data centers are eating up so much memory
that even the little cards photographers sticking their cameras are getting squeezed out.
Sony's only comment was, we'll monitor the situation,
which is Corpo speak for. We have no idea what's going on.
Please help. What are we supposed to do?
Break into their office and be like, hey, it's okay. It'll be fine.
Anime Play, one of the biggest, less than legal anime streaming apps
in the Asia Pacific region just got completely dismantled
by the Anti-Piracy Coalition, otherwise known as ACE.
The app had over five million users and was being run by a single guy
out of Indonesia since 2020. When ACE tracked him down, he surrendered everything.
Source code, servers, databases, basically his entire operation.
ACE also seized 15 associated domains.
So this is really more of a full scorched earth, take no prisoners, take down against the service.
And in one fell swoop, the pirate weebs quest for the one piece
suffered a major setback. I've never seen the show. Tell me if that's a valid reference.
And researchers in South Korea have developed a wireless communication system
that works 100 meters underground
using magnetic fields instead of radio waves
to punch through solid rock. Okay.
We tested it in a limestone mine environment that's known for completely blocking
traditional wireless signals and it worked well enough for voice communication.
The goal of the project is to improve the technology for rescue operations and mine safety,
but they're already reportedly looking at shrinking it down for smartphones.
Finally, we'll have better internet for the mole people.
They've been asking us, hey,
Wi-Fi sucks. Sorry. And those same mole people will use their better internet
to track you, oh, if you don't come back on Wednesday for more tech news,
somehow that's related. Well, oh, we've reached our destination.
Please collect your opinions from the overhead bin and exit in an orderly fashion.
What, we don't want them to comment the opinions?