Tech

windows-version-of-the-venerable-linux-“sudo”-command-shows-up-in-preview-build

Windows version of the venerable Linux “sudo” command shows up in preview build

Tech, Windows 11, Windows Server / /

sudo start your photocopiers —

Feature is experimental and, at least currently, not actually functional.

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Not now, but maybe soon?

Enlarge / Not now, but maybe soon?

Andrew Cunningham

Microsoft opened its arms to Linux during the Windows 10 era, inventing an entire virtualized subsystem to allow users and developers to access a real-deal Linux command line without leaving the Windows environment. Now, it looks like Microsoft may embrace yet another Linux feature: the sudo command.

Short for “superuser do” or “substitute user do” and immortalized in nerd-leaning pop culture by an early xkcd comic, sudo is most commonly used at the command line when the user needs administrator access to the system—usually to install or update software, or to make changes to system files. Users who aren’t in the sudo user group on a given system can’t run the command, protecting the rest of the files on the system from being accessed or changed.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, user @thebookisclosed found settings for a Sudo command in a preview version of Windows 11 that was posted to the experimental Canary channel in late January. WindowsLatest experimented with the setting in a build of Windows Server 2025, which currently requires Developer Mode to be enabled in the Settings app. There’s a toggle to turn the sudo command on and off and a separate drop-down to tweak how the command behaves when you use it, though as of this writing the command itself doesn’t actually work yet.

The sudo command is also part of the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), but that version of the sudo command only covers Linux software. This one seems likely to run native Windows commands, though obviously we won’t know exactly how it works before it’s enabled and fully functional. Currently, users who want a sudo-like command in Windows need to rely on third-party software like gsudo to accomplish the task.

The benefit of the sudo command for Windows users—whether they’re using Windows Server or otherwise—would be the ability to elevate the privilege level without having to open an entirely separate command prompt or Windows Terminal window. According to the options available in the preview build, commands run with sudo could be opened up in a new window automatically, or they could happen inline, but you’d never need to do the “right-click, run-as-administrator” dance again if you didn’t want to.

Microsoft regularly tests new Windows features that don’t make it into the generally released public versions of the operating system. This feature could also remain exclusive to Windows Server without making it into the consumer version of Windows. But given the command’s presence in Linux and macOS, it will be a nice quality-of-life improvement for Windows users who spend lots of time staring at the command prompt.

Microsoft is borrowing a longstanding Linux feature here, but that road goes both ways—a recent update to the Linux systemd software added a Windows-inspired “blue screen of death” designed to give users more information about crashes when they happen.

Windows version of the venerable Linux “sudo” command shows up in preview build Read More »

google-will-no-longer-back-up-the-internet:-cached-webpages-are-dead

Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead

Tech / /

We need a cached version of Google, the company —

Google Search will no longer make site backups while crawling the web.

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A large Google logo is displayed amidst foliage.

Google will no longer be keeping a backup of the entire Internet. Google Search’s “cached” links have long been an alternative way to load a website that was down or had changed, but now the company is killing them off. Google “Search Liaison” Danny Sullivan confirmed the feature removal in an X post, saying the feature “was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”

The feature has been appearing and disappearing for some people since December, and currently, we don’t see any cache links in Google Search. For now, you can still build your own cache links even without the button, just by going to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:” plus a website URL, or by typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search. For now, the cached version of Ars Technica seems to still work. All of Google’s support pages about cached sites have been taken down.

Cached links used to live under the drop-down menu next to every search result on Google’s page. As the Google web crawler scoured the Internet for new and updated webpages, it would also save a copy of whatever it was seeing. That quickly led to Google having a backup of basically the entire Internet, using what was probably an uncountable number of petabytes of data. Google is in the era of cost savings now, so assuming Google can just start deleting cache data, it can probably free up a lot of resources.

Cached links were great if the website was down or quickly changed, but they also gave some insight over the years about how the “Google Bot” web crawler views the web. The pages aren’t necessarily rendered like how you would expect. In the past, pages were text-only, but slowly the Google Bot learned about media and other rich data like javascript (there are a ton of specialized Google Bots now). A lot of Google Bot details are shrouded in secrecy to hide from SEO spammers, but you could learn a lot by investigating what cached pages look like. In 2020, Google switched to mobile-by-default, so for instance, if you visit that cached Ars link from earlier, you get the mobile site. If you run a website and want to learn more about what a site looks like to a Google Bot, you can still do that, though only for your own site, from the Search Console.

The death of cached sites will mean the Internet Archive has a larger burden of archiving and tracking changes on the world’s webpages.

Google will no longer back up the Internet: Cached webpages are dead Read More »

“rasti-computer”-is-a-detailed-grid-compass-tribute-made-from-framework-innards

“Rasti Computer” is a detailed GRiD Compass tribute made from Framework innards

3D printing, computer history, grid compass, grid systems corp, laptop design, mechanical keyboards, Tech / /

But can it play Pitfall!? —

It’s a custom keyboard, an artfully dinged-up case, and a wonderful throwback.

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Penk Chen's Rasti Computer

Enlarge / Penk Chen’s Rasti Computer, built with 3D printing, Framework laptop internals, and a deep love for the first laptop that went to space.

If I had to figure out what to do with the insides of a Framework 13 laptop I had lying around after today, I might not turn it into a strange but compelling “Slabtop” this time.

No, I think that, having seen Penk Chen’s remarkable project to fit Framework parts into a kind of modern restyling of the Grid Compass laptop, I would have to wait until Chen posts detailed build instructions for this project… and until I had a 3D printer… and could gather the custom mechanical keyboard parts. Sure, that’s a lot harder, but it’s hard to put a price on drawing unnecessary attention to yourself while you chonk away on your faux-used future laptop.

The Rasti Computer, which Chen writes is “derived from the German compound word ‘Rasterrahmen’ (grid + framework),” has at its core the mainboard, battery, and antennae from the highly modular and repairable first-generation Framework laptop. It takes input from the custom keyboard Chen designed for the chassis, with custom PCB and 3D-printed keycaps and case. It sends images to a 10.4-inch QLED 1600×720 display, and it all fits inside a bevy of 3D-printed pieces with some fairly standard hex-head bolts. Oh, and the hinges from a 2012 13-inch MacBook pro, though that’s possibly negotiable.

  • Rear view of the Rasti Computer, with “a touch of silver dry brushing [that] added the beat-up metal look.”

  • Semi-exploded view of the Rasti Computer.

  • You can, of course, run Windows on this device, if you like. But it might feel dissonant to put so much custom work in to run a stock OS.

Chen’s project derives from, and pays tribute to, the Grid Compass (styled “GRiD” by its maker, GRiD Systems Corp.). The Compass was probably (again, probably) the first clamshell-style laptop made. It saw use by NASA’s Space Shuttle program, as well as by military and other entities needing a laptop that was both compact and throw-it-at-a-wall durable. It had 256KB of memory by default (less than half the amount Bill Gates didn’t say you should ever need), a 320×240 pixel screen, and an Intel 8086 processor. Some models contained a 1,200bps modem. It cost more than $8,000 in 1982, or almost $25,000 today.

We have it on good word from some resident vintage computer collectors that the Compass remains a rare and expensive item to get. Rebuilding a Framework mainboard into a modern-day Grid-like doesn’t seem particularly cheap, depending on your 3D printer setup, or lack thereof. Nor is it likely to be easy, given a glimpse at how it goes together. But it will give you a unique portable and conversation piece, one that runs programs beyond Grid-OS.

You can read more about the Grid Compass at Cooper Hewitt, the firm where Compass designer Bill Moggridge worked as design director from 2010 until his 2011 passing. If you remember bubble memory, it’s a dip back into that genial trauma. Hackaday, where we first saw the Rasti project, wrote up a similarly Compass-inspired laptop, the GRIZ Sextant, with a Raspberry Pi at its core.

“Rasti Computer” is a detailed GRiD Compass tribute made from Framework innards Read More »

new-6gb-version-of-the-rtx-3050-may-be-nvidia’s-first-sub-$200-gpu-in-over-4-years

New 6GB version of the RTX 3050 may be Nvidia’s first sub-$200 GPU in over 4 years

gaming, GeForce RTX 3050, rtx 3050, Tech / /

clearing a low bar —

Exciting? No. New technology? Also no. But it ought to be better than a 1650.

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New 6GB version of the RTX 3050 may be Nvidia’s first sub-$200 GPU in over 4 years

Gigabyte

Nvidia launched three new GPUs last month, part of a Super overhaul of the RTX 40-series designed to improve the value of the company’s $600-and-up graphics cards.

But today, the company is quietly doing something that it hasn’t done in over four years: launching a sub-$200 graphics card. As spotted by TechPowerUp, Nvidia partners like Gigabyte have begun officially announcing a 6GB version of the old RTX 3050 graphics card, albeit with less memory and memory bandwidth, fewer CUDA cores, and lower power requirements.

The announcement follows a few days of leaked retail listings, which generally point to an MSRP of roughly $179 for the new-old card. This would make it Nvidia’s first sub-$200 graphics card launch since the GeForce GTX 1650 Super came out in late 2019, a four-year gap caused partially by a cryptocurrency- and pandemic-fueled GPU shortage that lasted from late 2020 into mid-to-late 2022.

RTX 3050 6GB RTX 3050 8GB GTX 1650 Super GTX 1650 RTX 2060 6GB RTX 3060 12GB RTX 4060
CUDA Cores 2,048 or 2,304? 2,560 1,280 896 1,920 3,584 3,072
Boost Clock 1,470 MHz 1,777 MHz 1,725 MHz 1,665 MHz 1,680 MHz 1,777 MHz 2,460 MHz
Memory Bus Width 96-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 192-bit 128-bit
Memory Clock 1,750 MHz 1,750 MHz 1,500 MHz 2,000 MHz 1,750 MHz 1,875 MHz 2,125MHz
Memory size 6GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6 4GB GDDR6 4GB GDDR5 6GB GDDR6 12GB GDDR6 8GB GDDR6
TGP 70 W  130 W 100 W 75 W 160 W 170 W 115 W

We weren’t in love with the original 8GB version of the 3050—”weird,” “overpriced,” and “could’ve been worse,” we wrote of it during the depths of the GPU shortage in early 2022—and the 6GB version is cut down even further. Its 6GB of memory is attached to a narrow 96-bit memory bus. And while reports differ on exactly how many CUDA cores we can expect—TechPowerUp and Tom’s Hardware say 2,048, while Gigabyte’s 6GB 3050 product pages list 2,304—it’s clear that there are fewer than in the original RTX 3050, and their clock speed is lower to boot.

These specs should make it an OK card for 1080p gaming at medium to high settings, depending on the game. It should also be a decent fit for small-form-factor systems—one of Gigabyte’s versions is a low-profile card suitable for many office desktops—and its 70 W power requirement should mean that the cards can draw all the power they need from the PCI Express slot, without the need for an external power connector.

As a cut-down version of a 2-year-old card based on a 3.5-year-old last-generation GPU architecture, the RTX 3050 isn’t very exciting. But it gets more interesting once you consider that Nvidia’s partners are currently selling the old non-Super version of the GTX 1650 for around the same price. It’s difficult to predict how much the narrower memory bus will impact the 6GB 3050’s performance, but compared to the 1650, it has a significantly higher number of newer CUDA cores, ray-tracing support, another 2GB of RAM, GDDR6 instead of GDDR5, and support for Nvidia’s DLSS upscaling technology (albeit not DLSS Frame Generation, which remains exclusive to the 40-series).

The new card also complicates one of AMD’s selling points for its new Ryzen 8000G processors, which include reasonably capable 1080p integrated GPUs. AMD compared the cost of a $329 Ryzen 7 8700G favorably to the cost of a Core i5 CPU and a GTX 1650 GPU, which deliver similar performance for more money. But the RTX 3050 should decisively outrun the 8700G, and AMD’s pricing argument was already being undercut by the extra expense of socket AM5 motherboards and DDR5 memory.

Nice as it is to see at least some twitch of life in the entry-level GPU market, we’re still a long way from where we were in the mid- to late-2010s, when sub-$200 cards like the GTX 1050 Ti and the 1650 launched not long after the other cards in the same series and used the newest GPU architectures available at the time. There’s a laptop GPU in the RTX 4050 series, but a desktop version looks highly unlikely at this point—to say nothing of a desktop version at or under $200. But a belated, uninspiring improvement is an improvement nonetheless.

New 6GB version of the RTX 3050 may be Nvidia’s first sub-$200 GPU in over 4 years Read More »

youtube-premium-announces-100-million-subscribers

YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers

Google, Tech, youtube music / /

Did someone really forget about this during the earnings call? —

Ad-free videos and YouTube Music access hits a major milestone.

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YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers

Hot on the heels of Google’s “One” subscription plan obtaining 100 million users, YouTube is also hitting that big milestone, with 100 million people paying for Premium and YouTube Music. YouTube’s subscription data didn’t make it into the earnings call three days ago.

It’s hard to know what exactly is driving YouTube’s subscriptions. Premium gets you both ad-free YouTube videos and YouTube Music, and it’s easy to imagine people sticking to one or the other. Ad-free videos have been getting the most aggressive promotion lately, with Google cracking down on ad-block users by blocking video playback and displaying interstitial pop-ups. After warning users that ad blockers violate YouTube’s terms of service, the pop-ups show a big “try YouTube Premium” button. Premium also added an exclusive “enhanced bitrate” 1080p setting, although 2K, 4K, and 8K options have always been free.

There’s not much new on the music side of things. YouTube Music is free with ads and a more limited feature set, but subscribing gets you ad-free playback, background playback on phones, and access to YouTube Music streaming on Google’s various speakers. YouTube’s blog post highlights quotes from many big music industry CEOs celebrating the service.

Google’s announcement bundles together two different subscriptions. There’s the $13.99 per month YouTube Premium subscription, which gets you ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music, and a music-only “YouTube Music Premium” subscription, which is $10.99 per month (Google increased prices last year). If you’re a Spotify customer and don’t want Google’s music offering, the company doesn’t have a plan for you. From 2021 to 2023, Google had a music-free “YouTube Premium Lite” subscription plan available only in Europe, but the company killed the plan a few months ago.

YouTube Premium announces 100 million subscribers Read More »

google’s-pixel-storage-issue-fix-requires-developer-tools-and-a-terminal

Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal

Google, Google Pixel, Tech / /

Stagefright’s revenge —

Automatic updates broke your phone; the fix is a highly technical manual process.

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Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal

Google has another fix for the second major storage bug Pixel phones have seen in the last four months. Last week, reports surfaced that some Pixel owners were being locked out of their phone’s local storage, creating a nearly useless phone with all sorts of issues. Many blamed the January 2024 Google Play system update for the issue, and yesterday, Google confirmed that hypothesis. Google posted an official solution to the issue on the Pixel Community Forums, but there’s no user-friendly solution here. Google’s automatic update system broke people’s devices, but the fix is completely manual, requiring users to download the developer tools, install drivers, change settings, plug in their phones, and delete certain files via a command-line interface.

The good news is that, if you’ve left your phone sitting around in a nearly useless state for the last week or two, following the directions means you won’t actually lose any data. Having a week or two of downtime is not acceptable to a lot of people, though, and several users replied to the thread saying they had already wiped their device to get their phone working again and had to deal with the resulting data loss (despite many attempts and promises, Android does not have a comprehensive backup system that works).

The bad news is that I don’t think many normal users will be able to follow Google’s directions. First, you’ll need to perform the secret action to enable Android’s Developer Options (you tap on the build number seven times). Then, you have to download Google’s “SDK Platform-Tools” zip file, which is meant for app developers. After that, plug in your phone, switch to the correct “File transfer” connection mode, open a terminal, navigate to the platform-tools folder, and run both “./adb uninstall com.google.android.media.swcodec” and “./adb uninstall com.google.android.media.” Then reboot the phone and hope that works.

I skipped a few steps (please read Google’s instructions if you’re trying this), but that’s the basic gist of it. The tool Google is having people use is “ADB,” or the “Android Debug Bridge.” This is meant to give developers command-line access to their phones, which allows them to quickly push new app builds to the device, get a readout of system logs, and turn on special developer flags for various testing.

Google’s instructions will only work if everything goes smoothly, and as someone with hundreds of hours in ADB from testing various Android versions, I will guess that it will probably not go smoothly. On Windows, the ADB drivers often don’t install automatically. Instead, you’ll get “unknown device” or some other incorrect device detection, and you won’t be able to run any commands. You usually have to use the “let me pick from drivers on my computer” option, browse through your file system, and manually “select” (more like “guess”) the driver you need while clicking through various warnings. You can already see at least one user with driver issues in the thread, with Windows telling them, “Your device has malfunctioned,” when really it just needs a driver.

Google’s Pixel storage issue fix requires developer tools and a terminal Read More »

hulu,-disney+-password-crackdown-kills-account-sharing-on-march-14

Hulu, Disney+ password crackdown kills account sharing on March 14

Disney, Hulu, streaming, Tech / /

profit push —

New subscribers are already banned from sharing logins outside their household.

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Selena Gomez and Martin Short on the set of <em>Only Murders in the Building</em> on February 14, 2022, in New York City. ” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/GettyImages-1370661621-800×513.jpg”></img><figcaption> <p><a data-height=Enlarge / Selena Gomez and Martin Short on the set of Only Murders in the Building on February 14, 2022, in New York City.

Hulu and Disney+ subscribers have until March 14 to stop sharing their login information with people outside of their household. Disney-owned streaming services are the next to adopt the password-crackdown strategy that has helped Netflix add millions of subscribers.

An email sent from “The Hulu Team” to subscribers yesterday and viewed by Ars Technica tells customers that Hulu is “adding limitations on sharing your account outside of your household.”

Hulu’s subscriber agreement, updated on January 25, now states that users “may not share your subscription outside of your household,” with household being defined as the “collection of devices associated with your primary personal residence that are used by the individuals who reside therein.”

The updated terms also note that Hulu might scrutinize user accounts to ensure that the accounts aren’t being used on devices located outside of the subscriber’s residence:

We may, in our sole discretion, analyze the use of your account to determine compliance with this Agreement. If we determine, in our sole discretion, that you have violated this Agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the Service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this Agreement (including those set forth in Section 6 of this Agreement).

Section 6 of Hulu’s subscriber agreement says Hulu can “restrict, suspend, or terminate” access without notice.

Hulu didn’t respond to a request for comment on how exactly it will “analyze the use” of accounts. But Netflix, which started its password crackdown in March 2022 and brought it to the US in May 2023, says it uses “information such as IP addresses, device IDs, and account activity to determine whether a device signed in to your account is part of your Netflix Household” and doesn’t collect GPS data from devices.

According to the email sent to Hulu subscribers, the policy will apply immediately to people subscribing to Hulu from now on.

The updated language in Hulu’s subscriber agreement matches what’s written in the Disney+/ESPN+ subscriber agreement, which was also updated on January 25. Disney+’s password crackdown first started in November in Canada.

A Disney spokesperson confirmed to Ars Technica that Disney+ subscribers have until March 14 to comply. The rep also said that notifications were sent to Disney+’s US subscribers yesterday; although, it’s possible that some subscribers didn’t receive an email alert, as is the case with a subscriber in my household.

The representative didn’t respond to a question asking how Disney+ will “analyze” user accounts to identify account sharing.

Push for profits

Disney CEO Bob Iger first hinted at a Disney streaming-password crackdown in August during an earnings call. He highlighted a “significant” amount of password sharing among Disney-owned streaming services and said Disney had “the technical capability to monitor much of this.” The executive hopes a password crackdown will help drive subscribers and push profits to Netflix-like status. Disney is aiming to make its overall streaming services business profitable by the end of 2024.

In November, it was reported that Disney+ had lost $11 billion since launching in November 2019. The streaming service has sought to grow revenue by increasing prices and encouraging users to join its subscription tier with commercials, which is said to bring streaming services higher average revenue per user (ARPU) than non-ad plans.

Hulu, which Disney will soon own completely, has been profitable in the past, and in Disney’s most recent financial quarter, it had a higher monthly ARPU than Disney+. Yet, Hulu has far fewer subscribers than Disney+ (48.5 million versus 150.2 million). Cracking down on Hulu password sharing is an obvious way for Disney to try to squeeze more money from the more financially successful streaming service.

Such moves run the risk of driving away users. However, Hulu, like Netflix, may be able to win over longtime users who have gotten accustomed to having easy access to Hulu, even if they weren’t paying for it. Disney+, meanwhile, is a newer service, so a change in policy may not feel as jarring to some.

Netflix, which allowed account sharing for years, has seen success with its password crackdown, saying in November that the efforts helped it add 8.8 million subscribers. Unlike the Disney-owned streaming services, though, Netflix allows people to add extra members to their non-ad subscription (in the US, Netflix charges $7.99 per person per month).

As Disney embarks on an uphill climb to make streaming successful this year, you can expect it to continue following the leader while also trying to compete with it. Around the same time as the password-sharing ban takes full effect, Disney should also unveil a combined Hulu-Disney+ app, a rare attempt at improving a streaming service that doesn’t center on pulling additional monthly dollars from customers.

Hulu, Disney+ password crackdown kills account sharing on March 14 Read More »

apple-declares-last-macbook-pro-with-an-optical-drive-obsolete

Apple declares last MacBook Pro with an optical drive obsolete

13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple, CD, dvd, MacBook Pro, optical drive, Tech / /

Physical media —

The laptop hadn’t been for sale in more than seven years.

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A bulky-looking older Apple laptop

Enlarge / The 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2012.

Sometimes, it’s worth taking a moment to note the end of an era, even when that ending might have happened a long time ago. Today, Apple announced that it considers the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro obsolete. It was the last MacBook Pro to include an optical drive for playing CDs or DVDs.

This means that any MacBook Pro with an optical drive is no longer supported.

Regarding products deemed obsolete, Apple’s support page on the topic says:

Products are considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than 7 years ago… Apple discontinues all hardware service for obsolete products, and service providers cannot order parts for obsolete products. Mac laptops may be eligible for an extended battery-only repair period for up to 10 years from when the product was last distributed for sale, subject to parts availability.

Apple stopped selling the mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro in October 2016 (it was available for a while as the company’s budget option in the Pro lineup), so anyone doing the math saw this coming. Further, it’s been years since this particular Mac was supported by the latest Apple OS releases. Released in 2020, macOS Big Sur ended support for the device, though older versions of macOS continued to get security updates.

The exclusion of an optical drive in subsequent MacBook Pro models was controversial, but it’s now clear that whether Apple was jumping the gun at that point or not, optical drives have fallen away for most users, and many Windows laptops no longer include them.

Apple still sells an external optical drive it calls SuperDrive that can read and burn CDs and DVDs. However, it hasn’t been updated in ages; it still uses USB-A, which most Mac hardware no longer includes. So, even if you have Apple’s external CD/DVD drive, you probably need an adapter to use it with your modern Mac.

That’s a sign of just how relevant optical drives are for today’s users, but this seems like a good time to remember a bygone era of physical media that wasn’t so long ago. So farewell, mid-2012 13-inch MacBook Pro—honestly, most of us didn’t miss you by this point.

Apple declares last MacBook Pro with an optical drive obsolete Read More »

google-earnings:-100-million-google-one-subscribers,-google-cloud-profits

Google earnings: 100 million Google One subscribers, Google Cloud profits

Google, google cloud, google earnings, Tech / /

Do you have 6M Sunday Ticket subscribers yet? Probably not —

We highlight the interesting numbers from Google’s earnings call.

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Alphabet’s earnings call was yesterday, and as usual, the company took in a lot of money ($86.31 billion), thanks mostly to ad click-through rates being at a certain level. More interesting, though, are the product numbers tucked away in the report.

For the good news, a big announcement was the success of one of Google’s biggest subscription plans, Google One, which CEO Sundar Pichai said is “just about to cross 100 million subscribers.” Google One is mostly a cloud-storage plan for Google accounts, allowing users to pay a monthly fee to get more than the 15GB of Drive and Gmail storage that comes free with a Google account. Pichai says the company’s whole subscription business—which is going to be Google One (storage), Google Workspace (business accounts), YouTube Premium (ad-free YouTube), and YouTube TV (a cable TV alternative)—are up to $5 billion in annual revenue. That’s up fivefold since 2019.

Speaking of subscriptions, one of Google’s most expensive, the $350-a-year NFL Sunday Ticket, didn’t have any hard numbers associated with it. Google SVP and CBO Philipp Schindler said the company was “pleased with the NFL Sunday Ticket signups in our first season.” Sunday Ticket was always a money-loser for DirecTV, and that was before the price shot up half a billion in the streaming era. Google is now reportedly on the hook to pay the NFL $2 billion a year for the next seven years. When asked about a return on investment for the project, Schindler only cited “solid” advertiser interest and that “NFL Sunday Ticket supports our long-term strategy and really helps solidify YouTube’s position as a must-have app on everyone’s TV set.”

The year 2023 was also the first time Google Cloud recorded a profit. Cloud is Google’s attempt to compete with Amazon Web Services as a platform for the cloud-based infrastructure needs of developers. After years of investment and growth, Cloud made $864 million in Q4 2023. It lost $186 million over the same period in 2022. According to a recent Canalys report, Google Cloud’s market share is in a distant third (10 percent) behind Microsoft Azure (25 percent) and the leader, AWS (31 percent).

For a while, Cloud’s third-place position could at least be offset by stronger growth than its competitors, but that Canalys report now has Microsoft with the highest growth rate, thanks to interest in its AI solutions. Microsoft is partnered with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. Pichai spent a lot of time talking about Google Cloud’s competing AI work, but OpenAI has a level of hype and interest that can’t be matched by Google’s Bard/Gemini talk.

I don’t think we ever got a clear number for exactly how many people Google laid off in 2023. The company announced 12,000 layoffs in January, saying US employees had “already” been notified, while international employee layoffs would “take longer due to local laws and practices.” The company then laid off various employees across divisions throughout the year. Whatever the final cuts ended up being, the overall headcount only changed from 190,234 in December 2022 to 182,502 at the end of 2023, a net loss of about 8,000 people. Google was still hiring a lot during those layoffs.

One hundred eighty-two thousand employees is still a lot. Google’s headcount at the end of 2021 was 156,000 employees, and some Wall Street investors want to see the company return to that number. Pichai told employees to brace for more layoffs “throughout the year,” though the CEO says they wouldn’t be at the scale of 2023. Google’s downsizing cost a lot of money, with the company spending $2.1 billion on employee severance and $1.8 billion on office space exit charges for 2023.

Listing image by Getty Images | Alexander Koerner

Google earnings: 100 million Google One subscribers, Google Cloud profits Read More »

“time-to-move-on”:-fitbit-owners-fed-up-with-battery-problems,-google-response

“Time to move on”: Fitbit owners fed up with battery problems, Google response

fitbit, Google, smartwatch, Tech / /
Fitbit Charge 5

Enlarge / The Fitbit Charge 5 came out in September 2021.

Google

Fitbit owners are getting frustrated with Charge 5 fitness trackers quickly losing their charge and, in some cases, exhibiting additional problems. Google has denied that the problems are tied to firmware updates. But users remain skeptical, and some are fed up with Google’s limited response to a recurring problem.

Charge 5 battery complaints

On December 21, Fitbit announced Charge 5 firmware update 194.91 on its support forum. On paper, the update seemed typical, promising things like new clock faces, support for right-to-left text, and “bug fixes and improvements,” per the release notes.

But by early January, there were complaints on the forum from people who said they updated their Charge 5 and then saw their device’s battery suddenly drain much faster. Examples include one user claiming their battery life drains from 100 percent to 0 percent in 25 minutes and others saying their Charge 5 lasts about 12 hours. Most say their Charge 5 no longer lasts for a full day despite staying powered for days between charges before the update. The problems led a user going by Ge0ffh to call his device “completely unusable.”

A user named Disappointed01 said:

My Charge 5 (2yrs [sic] old) was working fine until I ran this update. Now I have to recharge it as least twice a day. Fully charged last night wore it for sleeping & flat when I awoke this morning. Have tried resetting … as per the advice on here. Has made no difference. Really disappointed as I love my Charge 5. I see a direct correlation between this battery issue and the update even though Fitbit reckon that’s not the case.

There are similar recollections and accusations against the firmware update on the support thread, which is 21 pages long as of this writing.

One user on the thread reported that they live in a household with three Charge 5s and that theirs is the only one with the latest firmware update and the only one experiencing problems.

Google denies firmware problem

The BBC was the first to report on concerns about the Charge 5’s latest firmware. Today, it reported that Google denied problems with the update.

“We’re still investigating this issue but can confirm it is not due to the recent firmware update,” a Google spokesperson told the BBC, which noted that Google’s rep “did not offer any alternative explanation.”

The Google spokesperson also advised users to keep updating their devices and to contact customer service if they have problems.

On the thread announcing the update, a Fitbit moderator has also advised users to contact Fitbit and conduct basic troubleshooting.

When I looked through the 21 pages of mostly complaints on the support thread, I saw a few people who reported that the firmware update did not result in Charge 5 problems.

But there are also numerous threads online (examples here, here, here, and here) demonstrating newfound frustration with the Charge 5.

“Time to move on”: Fitbit owners fed up with battery problems, Google response Read More »

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YouTube TV starts testing customizable 2×2 multiview options

Tech, youtube TV / /

Just in time for football to end —

YouTube TV has been promising customizable multiview for 10 months.

–

For the NBA YouTube launched

Enlarge / For the NBA YouTube launched “Multiview,” which is coming to Sunday Ticket. It’s four games in a split screen.

YouTube

YouTube TV may finally get a configurable split-screen mode. Google’s cable TV replacement service launched a 2×2 “multiview” feature in 2023, but it relied on pre-made choices cooked up by some person (or maybe AI) inside Google. It’s 10 months later, and now some users on Reddit are seeing a “Build a multiview” option that would let you pick which four channels you want to watch. Cord Cutters News got confirmation from Google that the feature is now being tested.

The current multiview is a fun way to stay on top of multiple games, but getting the games you want is an awkward experience. I’ve been watching NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube TV this year, and there will be times when there are nine games on simultaneously, and you get only a handful of pre-made multiview options to sift through. Is your desired combination of four games in one of those multiview options? You’d better hope so! The canned combinations only get more awkward as the day goes on: one game ends early, and the station cuts to coverage of another game, and now two of your four windows have duplicate games. If an early game runs long and you want to watch the end next to an already-started late game, that was never an option either. The canned options were always four NFL games, too. If you wanted to watch the NFL and some non-NFL content, you were out of luck. You were easily looking at hundreds of multiview possibilities, so canned selections don’t scale well at all.

The Reddit user claims to have access to the feature and says that, during NBA games, the feature is limited to only selecting other NBA games, but at least that is better than scrolling through random pre-made combinations.

YouTube told Cord Cutters News that the feature would roll out to all devices that currently support multiview, but YouTube did not say when that would happen. YouTube has been promising customizable multiview since the feature launched last March. It also promised mixing and matching content types back in June, but that feature hasn’t widely launched, either. Testing is a good sign, at least.

The calls for customizable multiview have been so loud that the feature request once made it into a Deadline interview with YouTube Chief Business Officer Mary Ellen Coe. Without explaining too much, Coe called the feature “a very hard thing to do technically.”

YouTube TV starts testing customizable 2×2 multiview options Read More »

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Raspberry Pi is planning a London IPO, but its CEO expects “no change” in focus

ARM, arm holdings plc, Biz & IT, eben upton, IPO, Raspberry Pi, Stock Market, Tech / /

Just enough RAM to move markets —

Eben Upton says hobbyists remain “incredibly important” while he’s involved.

– Updated

Raspberry Pi 5 with Active Cooler installed on a wood desktop

Enlarge / Is it not a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing? So small a thing!

Andrew Cunningham

The business arm of Raspberry Pi is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) in London. CEO Eben Upton tells Ars that should the IPO happen, it will let Raspberry Pi’s not-for-profit side expand by “at least a factor of 2X.” And while it’s “an understandable thing” that Raspberry Pi enthusiasts could be concerned, “while I’m involved in running the thing, I don’t expect people to see any change in how we do things.”

CEO Eben Upton confirmed in an interview with Bloomberg News that Raspberry Pi had appointed bankers at London firms Peel Hunt and Jefferies to prepare for “when the IPO market reopens.”

Raspberry previously raised money from Sony and semiconductor and software design firm ARM, and it sought public investment. Upton denied or didn’t quite deny IPO rumors in 2021, and Bloomberg reported Raspberry Pi was considering an IPO in early 2022. After ARM took a minority stake in the company in November 2023, Raspberry Pi was valued at roughly 400 million pounds, or just over $500 million.

Given the company’s gradual recovery from pandemic supply chain shortages, and the success of the Raspberry Pi 5 launch, the company’s IPO will likely jump above that level, even with a listing in the UK rather than the more typical US IPO. Upton told The Register that “the business is in a much better place than it was last time we looked at it [an IPO]. We partly stopped because the markets got bad. And we partly stopped because our business became unpredictable.”

News of the potential transformation of Raspberry Pi Ltd from the private arm of the education-minded Raspberry Pi Foundation into a publicly traded company, obligated to generate profits for shareholders, reverberated about the way you’d expect on Reddit, Hacker News, and elsewhere. Many pointed with concern to the company’s decision to prioritize small business customers requiring Pi boards for their businesses as a portent of what investors might prioritize. Many expressed confusion over the commercial entity’s relationship to the foundation and what an IPO meant for that arrangement.

Seeing comments after the Bloomberg story, Upton said he understood concerns about a potential shift in mission or a change in the pricing structure. “It’s a good thing, in that people care about us,” Upton said in a phone interview. But he noted that Raspberry Pi’s business arm has had both strategic and private investors in its history, along with a majority shareholder in its Foundation (which in 2016 owned 75 percent of shares), and that he doesn’t see changes to what Pi has built.

“What Raspberry Pi [builds] are the products we want to buy, and then we sell them to people like us,” Upton said. “Certainly, while I’m involved in it, I can’t imagine an environment in which the hobbyists are not going to be incredibly important.”

The IPO is “about the foundation,” Upton said, with that charitable arm selling some of its majority stake in the business entity to raise funds and expand. (“We’ve not cooked up some new way for a not-for-profit to do an IPO, no,” he noted.) The foundation was previously funded by dividends from the business side, Upton said. “We do this transaction, and the proceeds of that transaction allow the foundation to train teachers, run clubs, expand programs, and… do those things at, at least, a factor of 2X. That’s what I’m most excited about.”

Asked about concerns that Raspberry Pi could focus its attention on higher-volume customers after public investors are involved, Upton said there would be “no change” to the kinds of products Pi makes, and that makers are “culturally important to us.” Upton noted that Raspberry Pi, apart from a single retail store, doesn’t sell Pis directly but through resellers. Margin structures at Raspberry Pi have “stayed the same all the way through,” Upton said and should remain so after the IPO.

Raspberry Pi’s lower-cost products, like the Zero 2 W and Pico, are fulfilling the educational and tinkering missions of the project, now at far better capability and lower price points than the original Pi products, Upton said. “If people think that an IPO means we’re going to … push prices up, push the margins up, push down the feature sets, the only answer we can give is, watch us. Keep watching,” he said. “Let’s look at it in 15, 20 years’ time.”

This post was updated at 2: 30 pm ET on January 30 to include an Ars interview with Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton.

Raspberry Pi is planning a London IPO, but its CEO expects “no change” in focus Read More »