Nextcloud is a host-your-own cloud platform that wants to help you "Regain control over your data." It contains products that allow for video chat, file storage, collaborative editing, and other stuff that reads a lot like a DIY Google Workspace replacement.

It's hard to offer that kind of full replacement, though, if your Android app can't upload anything other than media files. Since mid-2024, Nextcloud claims, Google has refused to reinstate the access it needs for uploading and syncing other file types.

"To make it crystal clear: All of you as users have a worse Nextcloud Files client because Google wanted that," reads a Nextcloud blog post from May 13, attributed to its team. "We understand and share your frustration," but there is nothing we can do."

Read full article

Comments

Microsoft put a lot of focus on Windows 11's design when it released the operating system in 2021 , making a clean break with the design language of Windows 10 (which had, itself, simply tweaked and adapted Windows 8's design language from 2012). Since then, Microsoft has continued to modify the software's design in bits and pieces, both for individual apps and for foundational UI elements like the Taskbar, system tray, and Windows Explorer.

Microsoft is currently testing a redesigned version of the Windows 11 Start menu , one that reuses most of the familiar elements from the current design but reorganizes them and gives users a few additional customization options. On its Microsoft Design blog today, the company walked through the new design and showed some of the ideas that were tried and discarded in the process.

Microsoft says it tested its menu designs with "over 300 Windows 11 fans" in unmoderated studies, "and dozens more" in "live co-creation calls." These testers' behavior and reactions informed what Microsoft kept and what it discarded.

Read full article

Comments

Google is adding a new security setting to Android to provide an extra layer of resistance against attacks that infect devices, tap calls traveling through insecure carrier networks, and deliver scams through messaging services.

On Tuesday, the company unveiled the Advanced Protection mode, most of which will be rolled out in the upcoming release of Android 16. The setting comes as mercenary malware sold by NSO Group and a cottage industry of other exploit sellers continues to thrive. These players provide attacks-as-a-service through end-to-end platforms that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities on targeted devices, infect them with advanced spyware, and then capture contacts, message histories, locations, and other sensitive information. Over the past decade, phones running fully updated versions of Android and iOS have routinely been hacked through these services.

A core suite of enhanced security features

Advanced Protection is Google’s latest answer to this type of attack. By flipping a single button in device settings, users can enable a host of protections that can thwart some of the most common techniques used in sophisticated hacks. In some cases, the protections hamper performance and capabilities of the device, so Google is recommending the new mode mainly for journalists, elected officials, and other groups who are most often targeted or have the most to lose when infected.

Read full article

Comments

The White House Office of Management and Budget dropped its "skinny" budget proposal for the federal government earlier this month, and the headline news for the US space program was the cancellation of three major programs: the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and Lunar Gateway.

Opinions across the space community vary widely about the utility of these programs—one friend in the industry predicted a future without them to be so dire that Artemis III would be the last US human spaceflight of our lifetimes. But there can be no question that if such changes are made they would mark the most radical remaking of NASA in two decades.

This report, based on interviews with multiple sources inside and out of the Trump administration, seeks to explain what the White House is trying to do with Moon and Mars exploration, what this means for NASA and US spaceflight, and whether it could succeed.

Read full article

Comments

While working on our review of Doom: The Dark Ages last week, I was unable to test the game on the Steam Deck due to a bug that prevented it from launching on SteamOS. I didn't consider this much of a loss at the time, since I figured the Deck's 3-year-old portable hardware was rated way below the minimum PC specs for the game , which call for ray tracing-capable graphics cards at a minimum.

Over the weekend, though, Valve released a preview build of a new version of SteamOS that allows Doom: The Dark Ages to actually launch on the Steam Deck. And after a bit of testing, I found the game is surprisingly playable on Valve's portable hardware, provided you're prepared to turn down the graphics settings.

With all the graphical quality sliders set to "Low" (and FSR upscaling set to "Performance"), I was able to run Doom: The Dark Ages at the system's native 1280×800 resolution and a reasonably steady 30 to 40 fps.

Read full article

Comments

Google accidentally showed off its big Android design refresh last week , but now Material 3 Expressive is official. Google says the new interface will begin with Android OS, but it will eventually expand across the full Google app ecosystem, bringing a more lively vibe to Gmail, Google Photos, and more.

Material 3 Expressive won't be entirely unfamiliar—it shares some basic design elements with the Material You system Google launched four years ago. Material 3 Expressive is a bolder take on the same aesthetic, featuring "springy" animations, brighter colors, and new shapes.

As we learned from Google's slipup, Material 3 Expressive is the result of numerous user studies, which included more than 18,000 participants. Google explored how people parse information on their phone, finding design themes that supposedly support quicker and easier interactions. Often, that seems to result in making certain UI elements larger and easier to spot. Google claims people can find these important buttons four times faster than they can with older Material You interfaces.

Read full article

Comments

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has threatened to revoke EchoStar licenses for radio frequency bands coveted by rival firms including SpaceX, which alleges that EchoStar is underutilizing the spectrum.

"I have directed agency staff to begin a review of EchoStar's compliance with its federal obligations to provide 5G service throughout the United States per the terms of its federal spectrum licenses," Carr wrote in a May 9 letter to EchoStar Chairman Charles Ergen. EchoStar and its affiliates "hold a large number of FCC spectrum licenses that cover a significant amount of spectrum," the letter said.

Ergen defended his company's wireless deployment but informed investors that EchoStar "cannot predict with any degree of certainty the outcome" of the FCC proceedings. The letter from Carr and Ergen's statement is included in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing submitted by EchoStar today. EchoStar's stock price was down about 8 percent in trading today.

Read full article

Comments

For most users, Windows 10 will stop receiving security updates and other official support from Microsoft on October 14, 2025, about five months from today. Until recently, Microsoft had also said that users running the Microsoft Office apps on Windows 10 would also lose support on that date, whether they were using the continually updated Microsoft 365 versions of those apps or the buy-once-own-forever versions included in Office 2021 or Office 2024.

Microsoft has recently tweaked this policy, however (as seen by The Verge ). Now, Windows 10 users of the Microsoft 365 apps will still be eligible to receive software updates and support through October of 2028 , "in the interest of maintaining your security while you upgrade to Windows 11." Microsoft is taking a similar approach to Windows Defender malware definitions, which will be offered to Windows 10 users " through at least October 2028 ."

The policy is a change from a few months ago, when Microsoft insisted that Office apps running on Windows 10 would become officially unsupported on October 14. The perpetually licensed versions of Office will be supported in accordance with Microsoft's "Fixed Lifecycle Policy," which guarantees support and security updates for a fixed number of years after a software product's initial release. For Office 2021, this means Windows 10 users will get support through October of 2026; for Office 2024, this should extend to October of 2029.

Read full article

Comments

Samsung released its Galaxy S25 series earlier this year to generally favorable reviews. It also teased the perplexingly thin S25 Edge, and now that phone is a reality. You can preorder Samsung's thinnest smartphone-ever today, but you should know what you're getting into. This $1,099 smartphone is incredibly slim, at just 5.8 mm, but it also steps down in the camera department and packs an anemic battery that may struggle to last all day.

This is a big, flat phone featuring a 120 Hz 6.7-inch OLED at 1440×3120. Like the S25 Ultra, it has a titanium frame with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the back. The front has Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 for improved scratch protection. There's almost no bezel around the display—in fact, there's almost no phone around the display. The body is only 5.8 mm thick, a substantial reduction from the similarly sized S25+ at 7.3 mm. That's really this phone's claim to fame: It's really thin. Everything else (and we do mean everything) is secondary to that.

Cramming premium camera modules into a smartphone is an engineering challenge even when you're not trying to make the phone as slim as possible. Similar to foldables, there just isn't enough space in the S25 Edge for a full suite of Samsung cameras. Therefore, this phone only has two rear camera modules: a 200 MP primary shooter that appears identical to the S25 Ultra's and a meager 12 MP ultrawide. There's a 12 MP selfie camera on the front as well. There is no telephoto lens at all, which you get even on the base model S25.

Read full article

Comments