Amazon is developing a new smartphone over a decade after discontinuing the Fire Phone, Reuters reported today, citing four anonymous “people familiar with the matter.” Reuters said the phone is codenamed Transformer but couldn’t confirm what it might cost, how much Amazon has invested into development thus far, or how much Amazon expects to make off the device. Like any product reportedly under development, it’s possible that Amazon will never…

A trade association of cloud service providers (CSPs) filed an antitrust complaint today with the European Union’s European Commission (EC) over Broadcom’s shuttering of VMware’s CSP partner program this year. Since Broadcom bought VMware, it has drastically cut the number of channel partners VMware works with, a shift that began with the elimination of VMware’s partner program. Broadcom replaced the program with an invite-only alternative that favors larger partners working…

The dream of the metaverse may have died for now, but Meta has decided it’s not completely giving up on the VR experience in Horizon Worlds, the virtual worlds service that it originally envisioned as the first step toward said metaverse. The news was announced via the Instagram account of Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. “We have decided, just today in fact, that we will keep Horizon Worlds working in VR,” said…

Google is planning big changes for Android in 2026 aimed at combating malware across the entire device ecosystem. Starting in September, Google will begin restricting application sideloading with its developer verification program, but not everyone is on board. Android Ecosystem President Sameer Samat tells Ars that the company has been listening to feedback, and the result is the newly unveiled advanced flow, which will allow power users to skip app…

In late 2024, the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud computing offerings. The tech giant’s “lack of proper detailed security documentation” left reviewers with a “lack of confidence in assessing the system’s overall security posture,” according to an internal government report reviewed by ProPublica. Or, as one member of the team put it: “The package is a pile of shit.” Read full…

Researchers are warning about the risks posed by a low-cost device that can give insiders and hackers unusually broad powers in compromising networks. The devices, which typically sell for $30 to $100, are known as IP KVMs. Administrators often use them to remotely access machines on networks. The devices, not much bigger than a deck of cards, allow the machines to be accessed at the BIOS/UEFI level, the firmware that…

Samsung has been selling foldable phones for years, but they all fold in half. Recently, the company released the Galaxy Z TriFold, which has two hinges that allow it to expand from something approaching phone-sized to a 10-inch tablet. It’s a neat engineering demo, and that’s how it’s going to stay—Samsung has confirmed it’s ending sales of the Galaxy Z TriFold just three months after it launched. According to Bloomberg,…

The Nintendo Switch 2’s backward-compatibility with Switch games is generally pretty good, and a few games have gotten patches from their developers to allow them to take advantage of the higher resolutions the console supports, among other features. For unpatched Switch games running on the Switch 2 while it’s docked, there should generally be no loss of quality compared to playing the same game on the Switch—the game will run…

Researchers say they’ve discovered a supply-chain attack flooding repositories with malicious packages that contain invisible code, a technique that’s flummoxing traditional defenses designed to detect such threats. The researchers, from firm Aikido Security, said Friday that they found 151 malicious packages that were uploaded to GitHub from March 3 to March 9. Such supply-chain attacks have been common for nearly a decade. They usually work by uploading malicious packages with…