Microsoft Edge has overtaken Apple's Safari to become the world's second most popular desktop browser, based on data provided by web analytics service StatCounter. MacRumors reports: According to the data, Microsoft Edge is now used on 10.07 percent of desktop computers worldwide, 0.46 percent ahead of Safari, which stands at 9.61 percent. Google Chrome remains in first place with a dominant 66.64 percent share, and Mozilla's Firefox stands in fourth with 7.86 percent. As the default Windows 11 browser, the popularity of Edge has crept up in recent months, with the first concrete signs that it would surpass Safari to take second place coming in February, when it was used on 9.54 percent of desktops globally. Back in January 2021, Safari held a 10.38 percent market share, indicating a gradual slippage in popularity over the last 14 months.

Meanwhile, first-placed Chrome has seen its user base increase incrementally over that time, but perhaps surprisingly, Firefox has leaked users since the beginning of the year, despite regular updates and improvements. That suggests Safari's hold on third place isn't in immediate danger, having lost only 0.23 percent share since February, but things could always change fast if Apple decides to introduce sweeping changes to the way Safari works in macOS 13 later this year. It's a different story when it comes to mobile platforms, notes MacRumors. "In StatCounter's analysis, Edge doesn't even make it into the top six browsers on mobile, but first-placed Chrome commands 62.87 of usage share, with Safari on iPhones and iPads taking a comfortable 25.35 percent in second place, 20.65 percent ahead of third-placed Samsung Internet, with 4.9 percent."

Andy Maxwell, reporting for TorrentFreak: In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, several Hollywood studios announced the immediate suspension of new releases in Russia. Unexpectedly, some Russian theaters are still able to show movies such as The Batman on the big screen but this isn't down to the studios. The movies are sourced from illegal torrent sites and few seem afraid to admit it.

Elon Musk likened Apple and its App Store to the equivalent of a "30% tax on the Internet" and said the fee is "10 times higher than it should be," in a series of tweets responding to a Slashdot tweet about the European Union's latest antitrust complaint against the tech giant .

A group of Apple employees have written an open letter to the company's executive team complaining about its new policy that only allows for two days of working from home, iMore has reported. From a report: They said that Apple's reasons for implementing the policy don't stand up, and that the policy is wasteful, inflexible and will lead to a "younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied" workforce. "You have characterized the decision for the Hybrid Working Pilot as being about combining the "need to commune in-person" and the value of flexible work," the letter states. "But in reality, it does not recognize flexible work and is only driven by fear. Fear of the future of work, fear of worker autonomy, fear of losing control."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bought access to location data harvested from tens of millions of phones in the United States to perform analysis of compliance with curfews, track patterns of people visiting K-12 schools, and specifically monitor the effectiveness of policy in the Navajo Nation, according to CDC documents obtained by Motherboard. From a report: The documents also show that although the CDC used COVID-19 as a reason to buy access to the data more quickly, it intended to use it for more general CDC purposes. Location data is information on a device's location sourced from the phone, which can then show where a person lives, works, and where they went.

The sort of data the CDC bought was aggregated -- meaning it was designed to follow trends that emerge from the movements of groups of people -- but researchers have repeatedly raised concerns with how location data can be deanonymized and used to track specific people. The documents reveal the expansive plan the CDC had last year to use location data from a highly controversial data broker. SafeGraph, the company the CDC paid $420,000 for access to one year of data to, includes Peter Thiel and the former head of Saudi intelligence among its investors. Google banned the company from the Play Store in June.

vm shares the blogpost of Mozilla releasing Firefox 100, and outlines some of thoughts: Out of the ashes of Netscape/AOL, Firebird rose as a promising new browser. A significant name change and a hundred releases later, Firefox 100 is still the underdog that keeps on fighting. With my mounting annoyance at all the Google services underpinning Chrome, I've since discovered and used Ungoogled Chromium, Waterfox, LibreWolf, and a handful of other lesser known spins on Chrome or Firefox. On mobile, Brave really does the best job at ad blocking whether you're on iOS or Android but the Mozilla Foundations is probably still the largest dev group fighting the good fight when it comes to both privacy and security enhancements.That's not to say that the Chromium team isn't security savvy -- I only wish they were just a little less Google. Anyhow, tell us about your favorite browser in the comments and have a look at Mozilla's latest release while you're at it.

UnknowingFool writes: In October 2021, PC World reviewed Windows 11 and labeled it as an "unnecessary replacement" to Windows 10 and did not recommend it for Windows 10 users. PC World noted that it was a "mixed bag of improved features and unnecessary changes." Six months later they reviewed it again. While MS has made improvements, PC World does not feel the improvements warrant a recommendation for Windows 10 users to upgrade.

A new espionage actor is breaching corporate networks to steal emails from employees involved in big financial transactions like mergers and acquisitions. From a report: Mandiant researchers, which first discovered the advanced persistent threat (APT) group in December 2019 and now tracks it as "UNC3524," says that while the group's corporate targets hint at financial motivation, its longer-than-average dwell time in a victim's environment suggests an intelligence gathering mandate. In some cases, UNC3524 remained undetected in victims' environments for as long as 18 months, versus an average dwell time of 21 days in 2021.

Mandiant credits the group's success at achieving such a long dwell time to its unique approach to its use of a novel backdoor -- tracked as "QuietExit" -- on network appliances that do not support antivirus or endpoint detection, such as storage arrays, load balancers and wireless access point controllers. The QuietExit backdoor's command-and-control servers are part of a botnet built by compromising D-Link and LifeSize conference room camera systems, according to Mandiant, which said the compromised devices were likely breached due to the use of default credentials, rather than an exploit.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Russian troops stole almost $5 million worth of farm equipment from a John Deere dealer in the occupied city of Melitopol, Ukraine, only to discover that the machines have been shut down remotely, making them inoperable, according to a report from CNN. Some of the equipment, which comes with a remote locking feature and a built-in GPS, was tracked over 700 miles away in the Zakhan Yurt village of Chechnya.

A source close to the situation told CNN that Russian troops gradually began taking machinery away from the dealer following their occupation of Melitopol in March. It reportedly started with two combine harvesters worth $300,000 each, a tractor, and a seeder, until troops hauled away all 27 pieces of equipment. Some of the equipment went to Chechnya, while others reportedly landed in a nearby village. "When the invaders drove the stolen harvesters to Chechnya, they realized that they could not even turn them on, because the harvesters were locked remotely," CNN's source told the outlet. Although the pieces of equipment were remotely disabled, CNN's source says that Russian troops may be trying to find a way around the block, as they're in contact with "consultants in Russia who are trying to bypass the protection."

The Biden administration plans to begin a $3.1 billion effort on Monday to spur the domestic production of advanced batteries, which are essential to its plan to speed the adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy. The New York Times reports: President Biden has prodded automakers to churn out electric vehicles and utilities to switch to solar, wind and other clean energy, saying the transitions are critical to eliminating the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. In the wake of surging energy prices caused largely by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, administration officials also have described the transition to clean energy as a way to insulate consumers from the fluctuation of global oil markets and achieve true energy independence. Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, last week called renewable energy "the greatest peace plan this world will ever know." Yet currently, lithium, cobalt and other minerals needed for electric car batteries and energy storage are processed primarily in Asia. China alone controls nearly 80 percent of the world's processing and refining of those critical minerals.

Ms. Granholm plans to announce the funding plan on Monday during a visit to Detroit, a senior administration official said. The $3.1 billion in grants, along with a separate $60 million program for battery recycling, is an effort to "reduce our reliance on competing nations like China that have an advantage over the global supply chain," according to a Department of Energy statement. The funding is aimed at companies that can create new, retrofitted or expanded processing facilities as well as battery recycling programs, officials with the Department of Energy said. The grants will be funded through the $1 trillion infrastructure law, which includes more than $7 billion to improve the domestic battery supply chain.

Venkat Srinivasan, director of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at Argonne National Laboratory, told the panel that the United States "can become a dominant force in energy storage technology" and has a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to seize the moment." Between electric vehicles and grid storage, the market for lithium-ion batteries in the United States is expected to increase by a factor of 20 to 30 in the next decade but a secure domestic supply chain is needed, Dr. Srinivasan said. The Biden administration wants half of all new vehicles sold in the United States to be electric by 2030. The president also has issued procurement guidelines to transform the 600,000-vehicle federal fleet, so that all new cars and trucks purchased by the federal government by 2035 are zero-emission.

Alphabet's Google will provide any U.S. business over $100,000 worth of online courses in data analytics, design and other tech skills for their workers free of charge, the search company said on Monday. Reuters reports: The offer marks a big expansion of Google's Career Certificates, a program the company launched in 2018 to help people globally boost their resumes by learning new tools at their own pace. Over 70,000 people in the United States and 205,000 globally have earned at least one certificate, and 75% receive a benefit such as a new job or higher pay within six months, according to Google.

The courses, designed by Google and sold through online education service Coursera, each typically cost students about $39 a month and take three to six months to finish. Google will now cover costs for up to 500 workers at any U.S. business, and it valued the grants at $100,000 because people usually take up to six months to finish. Lisa Gevelber, founder of Grow with Google, the company unit overseeing certificates, said course completion rates are higher when people pay out of pocket but that the new offer was still worthwhile if it could help some businesses gain digital savvy. Certificates also are available in IT support, project management, e-commerce and digital marketing. They cover popular software in each of the fields, including Google advertising services.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Spanish authorities have detected "Pegasus" spyware in the mobile phones of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez and Defense Minister Margarita Robles, the government minister for the presidency, Felix Bolanos, said on Monday. Bolanos told a news conference Sanchez's phone was infected in May 2021 and at least one data leak occurred then. He did not say who could have been spying on the premier or whether foreign or Spanish groups were suspected of being behind it.

"The interventions were illicit and external. External means carried out by non-official bodies and without state authorization," he said, adding that the infections had been reported to the justice ministry, and the High Court would be in charge of the case. [...] The European Union's data watchdog has called for a ban on Pegasus over allegations it has been abused by client governments to spy on rights activists, journalists and politicians.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Facebook's podcast offerings are vanishing just a year after they launched. Parent company Meta has confirmed to Bloomberg that it will wind down podcasting, Soundbites and its general audio hub. It will no longer let podcasters add shows to Facebook as of this week, and will remove them entirely on June 3rd. The hub and Soundbites will close sometime in the "coming weeks," while Live Audio Rooms will fold into Facebook Live. A Meta spokesperson characterized the move as a matter of concentration. The move will help Meta "focus on the most meaningful experiences," according to the representative.

Technology startup Rivos allegedly stole Apple's computer-chip trade secrets after poaching its engineers, Apple said in a lawsuit filed in California federal court. From a report: Apple's Friday lawsuit said Mountain View, California-based Rivos has hired over 40 of its former employees in the past year to work on competing "system-on-chip" (SoC) technology, and that at least two former Apple engineers took gigabytes of confidential information with them to Rivos. Rivos is a "stealth" startup that has largely avoided public attention since its founding last year.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Meta Platforms is planning to release four virtual reality headsets between now and 2024, according to an internal road map viewed by The Information. The aggressive timeline reflects Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's desire to advance his vision of the metaverse by getting more people to use VR devices. Whether he can meet the timeline, however, is far from certain. Meta is planning to release Project Cambria, a high-end VR and mixed-reality headset it is billing as a device for the future of work, around September, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cambria was originally supposed to come out last year but its launch was delayed by supply chain and other pandemic-related issues, which could again push back the launch date, the person said. A second version of Cambria, code-named Funston, is slated to come out in 2024. Meanwhile, Meta plans two new versions of its less expensive Quest headset -- internally code-named Stinson and Cardiff -- for release in 2023 and 2024, the road map shows. All four code names for the devices on Meta's Cambria and Quest lines refer to locations in California, following the pattern of the earliest Quest prototypes, made under the name Project Santa Cruz.

Telegram appears to be testing another way for the super popular messaging app to start bringing in revenue. From a report: Beta testers for Telegram's iOS app noticed something new in version 8.7.2, as first spotted by Android Police: a new set of stickers and reaction emoji that you can only unlock "by subscribing to Telegram Premium." Telegram Premium, of course, doesn't exist yet. But right now, users with access to Telegram's TestFlight builds and its Test Server are able to send each other exploding-heart and flying-ghost reactions, a sticker in which that cute blobby yellow duck is just unbearably sad, and a few other new things. And it appears that, ultimately, even the recipients of those messages will need Telegram Premium to see them; if you send a non-subscriber a sad duck, they'll get a prompt to sign up.

Alphabet's Google lashed out at the European Union for doling out a "quasi criminal fine of very large proportions" for allegedly thwarting advertising rivals on websites. From a report: At a hearing at the bloc's General Court on Monday, the search giant said the 2019 decision by the EU's antitrust arm to issue the 1.49 billion-euro ($1.6 billion) fine was riddled with errors and should be struck down. The case is the last of a trilogy of EU court fights over cases that set the course for antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's bid to rein in Silicon Valley. It focuses on Google's role as an ad broker for websites, targeting exclusivity agreements for online ads with its AdSense for Search product. In its decision, the EU accused the company of imposing a number of restrictive clauses in contracts with third-party websites which prevented Google's rivals from placing their search adverts on these websites. The European Commission analysis includes "errors of characterization" that led it "to proceed on a false basis in its assessment of the clauses and they have resulted in material errors of analysis," said Josh Holmes, one of the lawyers for Google appearing in court.

Robert "Razerguy" Krakoff, the co-founder and former president of gaming hardware company Razer, died last week at the age of 81. Maybe you've never heard Krakoff's name, but it's possible you've been impacted by his far-reaching legacy. From a report: In 1999, Krakoff was behind the first-ever gaming mouse: the Razer Boomslang. Not only was it the foundation of Razer's now-massive lineup of gaming mice, it arguably jumpstarted the entire gaming peripheral industry. Below, you can see Krakoff himself in an ad promoting the Razer Boomslang mouse in 2002 -- alongside professional gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel, who signed a historic sponsorship deal with Razer long before the word "esports" entered the lexicon.

Less than two years after Google dismissed two researchers who criticized the biases built into artificial intelligence systems, the company has fired a researcher who questioned a paper it published on the abilities of a specialized type of artificial intelligence used in making computer chips. From a report: The researcher, Satrajit Chatterjee, led a team of scientists in challenging the celebrated research paper, which appeared last year in the scientific journal Nature and said computers were able to design certain parts of a computer chip faster and better than human beings. Dr. Chatterjee, 43, was fired in March, shortly after Google told his team that it would not publish a paper that rebutted some of the claims made in Nature, said four people familiar with the situation who were not permitted to speak openly on the matter. Google confirmed in a written statement that Dr. Chatterjee had been "terminated with cause." Google declined to elaborate about Dr. Chatterjee's dismissal, but it offered a full-throated defense of the research he criticized and of its unwillingness to publish his assessment.

As an apparent reward for returning to the office, thousands of Google employees were treated to a private Lizzo concert at the Shoreline Amphitheatre near Google's headquarters, reports CNBC: Google implemented a return-to-office policy starting in early April, requiring employees to go to physical facilities at least three days a week. Staffers pushed back on the mandate and the prospect of navigating traffic jams, after they worked efficiently for so long at home while the company enjoyed some of its fastest revenue growth of the past 15 years....

Google had delayed its return plans on multiple occasions, due mostly to surges in Covid-19 case numbers. But this time, the company stuck to its reopening schedule. In the early days back, employees were greeted with marching bands on campus, as well as photo booths, celebratory food and visits from prominent politicians.

"Thank you for being back!" Lizzo said. "Thank you for surviving! Google, we back, bitch!!" [...] She inserted the company's name into her popular song "Boys," changing the lyrics from "I heard you a freak, too" to "I heard you a freak, Google!"
After two and a half years "of protecting others and ourselves but also being very disconnected," Lizzo told the crowd, "It's so incredible to see how connected we are right now!" CNBC reports.

Someone in the crowd shouted back, "Propaganda! Propaganda!"