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.”
A notice in Nextcloud’s Android app regarding file uploads.
Credit: Nextcloud
A notice in Nextcloud’s Android app regarding file uploads. Credit: Nextcloud
Ars has reached out to Google for comment and will update this post with any response. A representative for NextCloud told Ars late Tuesday that the company had no update on its Android app.
Nextcloud states that it has had read and write access to all file types since its first Android app. In September 2024, a Nextcloud Android update with “All files access” was “refused out of the blue,” with a request that the app use “a more privacy aware replacement,” Nextcloud claims. The firm states it has provided background and explanations but received “the same copy-and-paste answers or links to documentation” from Google.
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.
This discarded Start menu design toyed with an almost Windows XP-ish left-hand sidebar, among other elements. Microsoft
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.
Many of the discarded menu ideas include larger previews for recently opened files, more space given to calendar reminders, and recommended “For You” content areas; one has a “create” button that would presumably activate some generative AI feature. Looking at the discarded designs, it’s easier to appreciate that Microsoft went with a somewhat more restrained redesign of the Start menu that remixes existing elements rather than dramatically reimagining it.
Microsoft has also tweaked the side menu that’s available when you have a phone paired to your PC, making it toggleable via a button in the upper-right corner. That area is used to display recent texts and calls and other phone notifications, recent contacts, and battery information, among a couple other things.
Microsoft’s team wanted to make sure the new menu “felt like it belonged on both a [10.5-inch] Surface Go and a 49-inch ultrawide,” a nod to the variety of hardware Microsoft needs to consider when making any design changes to Windows. The menu the team landed on is essentially what has been visible in Windows Insider Preview builds for a month or so now: two rows of pinned icons, a “Recommended” section with recently installed apps, recently opened files, a (sigh) Windows Store app that Microsoft thinks you should try, and a few different ways to access all the apps on your PC. By default, these will be arranged by category, though you can also view a hierarchical alphabetized list like you can in the current Start menu; the big difference is that this view is at the top level of the Start menu in the new version, rather than being tucked away behind a button.
For more on the history of the Start menu from its inception in the early ’90s through the release of Windows 10, we’ve collected tons of screenshots and other reminiscences here.
Andrew is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica, with a focus on consumer tech including computer hardware and in-depth reviews of operating systems like Windows and macOS. Andrew lives in Philadelphia and co-hosts a weekly book podcast called Overdue.
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.
Material 3 Expressive
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.
What you can expect from Material 3 Expressive
Animations will abound in future versions of Android, and Google emphasizes the springy aspect. The style is supposed to feel natural and fun, with more UI elements connected to dynamic haptics. Colors are also getting an overhaul, but this isn’t a complete rethink of Material You. The theming engine will pick bolder colors to improve the visual separation of UI elements, and you will see those colors in more places.
Google says it’s also updating Android’s typography, featuring more contrast between headers and body text. This will change across Google’s apps to help users parse information faster. Certain buttons will also come in a wider variety of shapes, and the labels will have varying text weights. Likewise, the style and shape of status bar icons will change to be more readable.
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.
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.
While the body of the phone is just 5.8 mm thick, the camera modules stick out a few millimeters more, making the phone quite wobbly when you set it on a table. The cameras have to stick out to leave more space for the internals, which are pretty powerful. Inside, this phone is essentially unchanged from the other S25 phones, with a Snapdragon 8 Elite, 12GB of RAM, and either 256 or 512GB of storage. The battery will be a problem, though.
It is very, very thin.
Credit: Samsung
It is very, very thin. Credit: Samsung
While the S25+ sports a passable 4,900 mAh cell, the super-slim S25 Edge has just 3,900 mAh of juice. That is a problem because the Snapdragon 8 Elite is a flagship processor designed for speed. While it’s relatively efficient in low-power mode, it will devour the Edge’s battery in short order if you’re playing games or multitasking. A 20 percent reduction in battery life compared to the Galaxy S25+, which is a one-day phone, is a tough sell.
Most smartphone manufacturers could never justify making such a strange, niche device. This is Samsung showing off its engineering skills, and the S25 Edge does look neat. But the novelty of a super-slim phone will probably wear off when you have to start plugging it in to get a boost mid-afternoon. It doesn’t even charge very fast, topping out at a mere 25 W. And you’ll be paying $1,099 for the privilege, which slots the Edge between the S25+ ($1,000) and the S25 Ultra ($1,300).
If you want a phone that is thin at the expense of everything else, you can order the Galaxy S25 Edge from Samsung or Best Buy. It comes in black, icy blue, and silver colors and will ship on May 30.
The new owners of VPN provider VPNSecure have drawn ire after canceling lifetime subscriptions. The owners told customers that they didn’t know about the lifetime subscriptions when they bought VPNSecure, and they cannot honor the purchases.
In March, complaints started appearing online about lifetime subscriptions to VPNSecure no longer working.
The first public response Ars Technica found came on April 28, when lifetime subscription holders reported receiving an email from the VPN provider saying:
To continue providing a secure and high-quality experience for all users, Lifetime Deal accounts have now been deactivated as of April 28th, 2025.
A copy of the email from “The VPN Secure Team” and posted on Reddit notes that VPNSecure had previously deactivated accounts with lifetime subscriptions that it said hadn’t been used in “over 6 months.” The message noted that VPNSecure was acquired in 2023, “including the technology, domain, and customer database—but not the liabilities.” The email continues:
Unfortunately, the previous owner did not disclose that thousands of Lifetime Deals (LTDs) had been sold through platforms like StackSocial.
We discovered this only months later—when a large portion of our resources were strained by these LTD accounts and high support volume from users, who through part of the database, provided no sustaining income to help us improve and maintain the service.
VPNSecure is offering affected users discounted new subscriptions for either $1.87 for a month (instead of $9.95), $19 for a year (instead of $79.92), or $55 for three years (instead of $107.64). The deals are available until May 31, per the email.
This week, users reported receiving a follow-up email from VPNSecure providing more details about why it made its bold and sudden move. Screenshots of the email shared on Reddit say that the acquisition by InfiniteQuant Ltd (which is a different company than InfiniteQuant Capital Ltd, an InfiniteQuant Capital rep told Ars via email) was “an asset only deal.”
A VPNSecure representative claimed on the reviews site Trustpilot that the current owners “did not gain access to the customer database until months” after the acquisition. According to VPNSecure’s owners, their acquisition netted them “the tech, the brand, and the infrastructure/technology—but none of the company, contracts, payments, or obligations from the previous owners.”
(Ars contacted Fellow Products for comment on AI brewing and profile sharing and will update this post if we get a response.)
Opening up brew profiles
Fellow’s brew profiles are typically shared with buyers of its “Drops” coffees or between individual users through a phone app.
Credit: Fellow Products
Fellow’s brew profiles are typically shared with buyers of its “Drops” coffees or between individual users through a phone app. Credit: Fellow Products
Aiden profiles are shared and added to Aiden units through Fellow’s brew.link service. But the profiles are not offered in an easy-to-sort database, nor are they easy to scan for details. So Aiden enthusiast and hobbyist coder Kevin Anderson created brewshare.coffee, which gathers both general and bean-based profiles, makes them easy to search and load, and adds optional but quite helpful suggested grind sizes.
As a non-professional developer jumping into a public offering, he had to work hard on data validation, backend security, and mobile-friendly design. “I just had a bit of an idea and a hobby, so I thought I’d try and make it happen,” Anderson writes. With his tool, brew links can be stored and shared more widely, which helped both Dixon and another AI/coffee tinkerer.
Gabriel Levine, director of engineering at retail analytics firm Leap Inc., lost his OXO coffee maker (aka the “Barista Brain”) to malfunction just before the Aiden debuted. The Aiden appealed to Levine as a way to move beyond his coffee rut—a “nice chocolate-y medium roast, about as far as I went,” he told Ars. “This thing that can be hyper-customized to different coffees to bring out their characteristics; [it] really kind of appealed to that nerd side of me,” Levine said.
Levine had also been doing AI stuff for about 10 years, or “since before everyone called it AI—predictive analytics, machine learning.” He described his career as “both kind of chief AI advocate and chief AI skeptic,” alternately driving real findings and talking down “everyone who… just wants to type, ‘how much money should my business make next year’ and call that work.” Like Dixon, Levine’s work and fascination with Aiden ended up intersecting.
The coffee maker with 3,588 ideas
The author’s conversation with the Aiden Profile Creator, which pulled in both brewing knowledge and product info for a widely available coffee.
What it does with that knowledge is something of a mystery to Levine himself. “There’s this kind of blind leap, where it’s grabbing the relevant pieces of information from the knowledge base, biasing toward all the expert advice and extraction science, doing something with it, and then I take that something and coerce it back into a structured output I can put on your Aiden,” Levine said.
It’s a blind leap, but it has landed just right for me so far. I’ve made four profiles with Levine’s prompt based on beans I’ve bought: Stumptown’s Hundred Mile, a light-roasted batch from Jimma, Ethiopia from Small Planes, Lost Sock’s Western House filter blend, and some dark-roast beans given as a gift. With the Western House, Levine’s profile creator said it aimed to “balance nutty sweetness, chocolate richness, and bright cherry acidity, using a slightly stepped temperature profile and moderate pulse structure.” The resulting profile has worked great, even if the chatbot named it “Cherry Timber.”
Levine’s chatbot relies on two important things: Dixon’s work in revealing Fellow’s Aiden API and his own workhorse Aiden. Every Aiden profile link is created on a machine, so every profile created by Levine’s chat is launched, temporarily, from the Aiden in his kitchen, then deleted. “I’ve hit an undocumented limit on the number of profiles you can have on one machine, so I’ve had to do some triage there,” he said. As of April 22, nearly 3,600 profiles had passed through Levine’s Aiden.
“My hope with this is that it lowers the bar to entry,” Levine said, “so more people get into these specialty roasts and it drives people to support local roasters, explore their world a little more. I feel like that certainly happened to me.”
Something new is brewing
Credit: Fellow Products
Having admitted to myself that I find something generated by ChatGPT prompts genuinely useful, I’ve softened my stance slightly on LLM technology, if not the hype. Used within very specific parameters, with everything second-guessed, I’m getting more comfortable asking chat prompts for formatted summaries on topics with lots of expertise available. I do my own writing, and I don’t waste server energy on things I can, and should, research myself. I even generally resist calling language model prompts “AI,” given the term’s baggage. But I’ve found one way to appreciate its possibilities.
This revelation may not be new to someone already steeped in the models. But having tested—and tasted—my first big experiment with willfully engaging with a brewing bot, I’m a bit more awake.
This post was updated at 8: 40 a.m. with a different capture of a GPT-created recipe.
Whoop published content which most certainly was to influence and convince people to buy the product, that clearly stated there was free upgrades. This has been removed as if it never happened. …
You can’t sell a subscription product making future promises, make a bunch of sales, and then take away those advertised benefits.
When reached for a comment, a Whoop spokesperson told Ars Technica that promises of free upgrades only pertained to previous launches.
Still, another Reddit user accused Whoop of performing a “bait and switch,” and a third said, “Just spent my first week with Whoop 4.0 and see all that has hit today. Looks like I’ll be returning and already walking away from the company.”
The statement shared by Whoop’s representative added:
With the launch of the WHOOP 5.0, we’ve worked to make WHOOP more accessible to more people and are now offering three tiers of membership, including our lowest price point ever with WHOOP One at $199. The WHOOP 4.0 will also continue to be supported, with members receiving new features available on our Peak membership.
Making adjustments
Whoop’s about-face is an increasingly common story as companies that launched during the initial Internet of Things (IoT) craze get a clearer idea of what they need to do to stay in business. In addition to changing its approach to upgrades, Whoop previously stopped selling monthly subscriptions to new customers. Its new devices, meanwhile, have more advanced features, including ECG capabilities and longer battery life claims, that likely add to associated costs.
Wearables are a relatively new type of gadget, and some firms, like Whoop, are still trying to figure out the best way to make money with them. That may mean going to market differently than a decade ago. Whoop customers will have to decide if the company’s offerings are worth dealing with the updated strategy and potential future changes.
Google and the DOJ have had their say; now it’s in the judge’s hands.
Last year, United States District Court Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google violated antitrust law by illegally maintaining a monopoly in search. Now, Google and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have had their say in the remedy phase of the trial, which wraps up today. It will determine the consequences for Google’s actions, potentially changing the landscape for search as we rocket into the AI era, whether we like it or not.
The remedy trial featured over 20 witnesses, including representatives from some of the most important technology firms in the world. Their statements about the past, present, and future of search moved markets, but what does the testimony mean for Google?
Everybody wants Chrome
One of the DOJ’s proposed remedies is to force Google to divest Chrome and the open source Chromium project. Google has been adamant both in and out of the courtroom that it is the only company that can properly run Chrome. It says selling Chrome would negatively impact privacy and security because Google’s technology is deeply embedded in the browser. And regardless, Google Chrome would be too expensive for anyone to buy.
Unfortunately for Google, it may have underestimated the avarice of its rivals. The DOJ called witnesses from Perplexity, OpenAI, and Yahoo—all of them said their firms were interested in buying Chrome. Yahoo’s Brian Provost noted that the company is currently working on a browser that supports the company’s search efforts. Provost said that it would take 6–9 months just to get a working prototype, but buying Chrome would be much faster. He suggested Yahoo’s search share could rise from the low single digits to double digits almost immediately with Chrome.
Credit: Aurich Lawson
Meanwhile, OpenAI is burning money on generative AI, but Nick Turley, product manager for ChatGPT, said the company was prepared to buy Chrome if the opportunity arises. Like Yahoo, OpenAI has explored designing its own browser, but acquiring Chrome would instantly give it 3.5 billion users. If OpenAI got its hands on Chrome, Turley predicted an “AI-first” experience.
On the surface, the DOJ’s proposal to force a Chrome sale seems like an odd remedy for a search monopoly. However, the testimony made the point rather well. Search and browsers are inextricably linked—putting a different search engine in the Chrome address bar could give the new owner a major boost.
Browser choice conundrum
Also at issue in the trial are the massive payments Google makes to companies like Apple and Mozilla for search placement, as well as restrictions on search and app pre-loads on Android phones. The government says these deals are anti-competitive because they lock rivals out of so many distribution mechanisms.
Google pays Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars per year to remain the default search engine in their browsers. Apple’s Eddie Cue admitted he’s been losing sleep worrying about the possibility of losing that revenue. Meanwhile, Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim explained that losing the Google deal could spell the end of Firefox. He testified that Mozilla would have to make deep cuts across the company, which could lead to a “downward spiral” that dooms the browser.
Google’s goal here is to show that forcing it to drop these deals could actually reduce consumer choice, which does nothing to level the playing field, as the DOJ hopes to do. Google’s preferred remedy is to simply have less exclusivity in its search deals across both browsers and phones.
The great Google spinoff
While Google certainly doesn’t want to lose Chrome, there may be a more fundamental threat to its business in the DOJ’s remedies. The DOJ argued that Google’s illegal monopoly has given it an insurmountable technology lead, but a collection of data remedies could address that. Under the DOJ proposal, Google would have to license some of its core search technology, including the search index and ranking algorithm.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai gave testimony at the trial and cited these data remedies as no better than a spinoff of Google search. Google’s previous statements have referred to this derisively as “white labeling” Google search. Pichai claimed these remedies could force Google to reevaluate the amount it spends on research going forward, slowing progress in search for it and all the theoretical licensees.
Currently, there is no official API for syndicating Google’s search results. There are scrapers that aim to offer that service, but that’s a gray area, to say the least. Google has even rejected lucrative deals to share its index. Turley noted in his testimony that OpenAI approached Google to license the index for ChatGPT, but Google decided the deal could harm its search dominance, which was more important than a short-term payday.
AI advances
Initially, the DOJ wanted to force Google to stop investing in AI firms, fearing its influence could reduce competition as it gained control or acquired these startups. The government has backed away from this remedy, but AI is still core to the search trial. That seemed to surprise Judge Mehta.
During Pichai’s testimony, Mehta remarked that the status of AI had shifted considerably since the liability phase of the trial in 2023. “The consistent testimony from the witnesses was that the integration of AI and search or the impact of AI on search was years away,” Mehta said. Things are very different now, Mehta noted, with multiple competitors to Google in AI search. This may actually help Google’s case.
AI search has exploded since the 2023 trial, with Google launching its AI-only search product in beta earlier this year.
AI search has exploded since the 2023 trial, with Google launching its AI-only search product in beta earlier this year.
Throughout the trial, Google has sought to paint search as a rapidly changing market where its lead is no longer guaranteed. Google’s legal team pointed to the meteoric rise of ChatGPT, which has become an alternative to traditional search for many people.
On the other hand, Google doesn’t want to look too meek and ineffectual in the age of AI. Apple’s Eddie Cue testified toward the end of the trial and claimed that rival traditional search providers like DuckDuckGo don’t pose a real threat to Google, but AI does. According to Cue, search volume in Safari was down for the first time in April, which he attributed to people using AI services instead. Google saw its stock price drop on the news, forcing it to issue a statement denying Cue’s assessment. It says searches in Safari and other products are still growing.
A waiting game
With the arguments made, Google’s team will have to sweat it out this summer while Mehta decides on remedies. A decision is expected in August of this year, but that won’t be the end of it. Google is still hoping to overturn the original verdict. After the remedies are decided, it’s going to appeal and ask for a pause on the implementation of remedies. So it could be a while before anything changes for Google.
In the midst of all that, Google is still pursuing an appeal of the Google Play case brought by Epic Games, as well as the ad tech case that it lost a few weeks ago. That remedy trial will begin in September.
Ryan Whitwam is a senior technology reporter at Ars Technica, covering the ways Google, AI, and mobile technology continue to change the world. Over his 20-year career, he’s written for Android Police, ExtremeTech, Wirecutter, NY Times, and more. He has reviewed more phones than most people will ever own. You can follow him on Bluesky, where you will see photos of his dozens of mechanical keyboards.
It’s not the first time Torvalds has suggested dropping support for 32-bit processors and relieving kernel developers from implementing archaic emulation and work-around solutions. “We got rid of i386 support back in 2012. Maybe it’s time to get rid of i486 support in 2022,” Torvalds wrote in October 2022. Failing major changes to the 6.15 kernel, which will likely arrive late this month, i486 support will be dropped.
Where does that leave people running a 486 system for whatever reason? They can run older versions of the Linux kernel and Linux distributions. They might find recommendations for teensy distros like MenuetOS, KolibriOS, and Visopsys, but all three of those require at least a Pentium. They can run FreeDOS. They might get away with the OS/2 descendant ArcaOS. There are some who have modified Windows XP to run on 486 processors, and hopefully, they will not connect those devices to the Internet.
Really, though, if you’re dedicated enough to running a 486 system in 2025, you’re probably resourceful enough to find copies of the software meant for that system. One thing about computers—you never stop learning.
This post was updated at 3: 30 p.m. to fix a date error.
Schools across the US are warning parents about an Internet trend that has students purposefully trying to damage their school-issued Chromebooks so that they start smoking or catch fire.
Various school districts, including some in Colorado, New Jersey,North Carolina, and Washington, have sent letters to parents warning about the trend that’s largely taken off on TikTok.
Per reports from school districts and videos that Ars Technica has reviewed online, the so-called Chromebook Challenge includes students sticking things into Chromebook ports to short-circuit the system. Students are using various easily accessible items to do this, including writing utensils, paper clips, gum wrappers, and pushpins.
The Chromebook challenge has caused chaos for US schools, leading to laptop fires that have forced school evacuations, early dismissals, and the summoning of first responders.
Schools are also warning that damage to school property can result in disciplinary action and, in some states, legal action.
In Plainville, Connecticut, a middle schooler allegedly “intentionally stuck scissors into a laptop, causing smoke to emit from it,” Superintendent Brian Reas told local news station WFSB. The incident reportedly led to one student going to the hospital due to smoke inhalation and is suspected to be connected to the viral trend.
“Although the investigation is ongoing, the student involved will be referred to juvenile court to face criminal charges,” Reas said.
While the Surface Pro and Laptop get price hikes that aren’t technically price hikes, some Surface accessories have had their prices directly increased. The Surface USB-C Travel Hub is now $120 instead of $100; the Surface Arc Mouse is now $90 instead of $80, and a handful of replacement parts are more expensive now than they were,according to recent Internet Wayback Machine snapshots. Generally, Surface Pen accessories and Surface Pro keyboard covers are the same price as they were before.
If you’re quick, you can still find the 256GB Surface devices in stock at third-party retailers. For example, Best Buy will sell you a Surface Laptop 7 with a 256GB SSD for $799, $100 less than the price of the 13-inch Surface Laptop that Microsoft just announced. We’d expect these retail listings to vanish over the next few days or weeks, and we wouldn’t expect them to come back in stock once they’re gone.
Increased import tariffs imposed by the Trump administration could explain at least some of these price increases. Though PCs and smartphones are currently exempted from the worst of them (at least for now), global supply chains and shipping costs are complex enough that they could still be increasing Microsoft’s costs indirectly. For the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, the decision to discontinue the old 256GB models also seems driven by a desire to make the new 12-inch Pro and 13-inch Laptop look like better deals than they did earlier this week. Raising the base price does help clarify the lineup; it just does so at the expense of the consumer.
