Such is the life of a Windows Insider Beta guinea pig who signed up to the beta channel to get new features earlier than others, and may have forgotten they’re also there to assist Microsoft build Windows 11 how it sees fit. That includes having previously gained new features yanked, which is what Microsoft is doing to some Beta testers even though it might annoy them. So, as Microsoft readies Windows 11 version 22H2, Microsoft thinks it’s beneficial to split the Beta Channel into ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ for new features....

Allowing connections to personal Teams accounts should help commercial Teams account owners connect to SMBs, many of which use Teams personal accounts for business, according to Microsoft. Since the feature also extends Teams to chat with external Teams commercial users, this should help Teams commercial customers strengthen ties with vendors and partners of all sizes, while potentially broadening its appeal for business-to-consumer communications. As of last week, Microsoft Teams had 270 million monthly active users (MAU), up from 250 million MAU last July....

The three-unit MH7603 mesh router uses Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax, to deliver 692 Mbps speeds in the same room. At a range of 10 yards and through a wall, it delivered an honest 287 Mbps. Jaw-dropping? No. Pretty darn good? You bet. To test it, I used Ixia’s IxChariot networking benchmark and my Galaxy S21 Ultra smartphone. This was backed up by my 1 Gigabit Charter cable internet connection. Now, in theory, this dual-band 2....

Quiet quitting is a newly-coined term that refers to employees who work-to-rule and avoid the concept of going above and beyond. In some cases, it’s seen as a rejection of hustle culture and a way for employees to create boundaries between their work and personal lives. ‘Quiet firing’, meanwhile, is when managers intentionally distance their employees from opportunities to further their career: for example, by obstructing them from participating in special projects, or hindering their chances of a promotion or a raise....

Here’s a tour of TCL’s MWC announcements. 30 Series smartphones TCL ‘pre-announced’ its 30 Series phones at CES, and has recently launched the $300 30 V 5G and $200 30 XE 5G in the US, via Verizon and T-Mobile respectively. There are five new phones, all costing less than €300 and launching first in Europe; four of them are 4G handsets and the top-end phone is a 5G device. The phones are: TCL 30 5G, TCL 30+, TCL 30, TCL 30 SE and TCL 30 E....

In its headline figure, the report said fixed-wireless NBN users only received 78.5% of the advertised download speed on average, which dropped to 68% in busy hours, and uploads sat at 58% in all hours and dropped to 52% in busy hours. For Fixed Wireless Plus users, a best effort service slated to provide 25-50Mbps down and 5-20Mbps up, the percentages translated to a download speed range of 50Mbps on average in the dead of night, down to 30Mbps at 8pm, and for uploads, the range was just above 6Mbps after midnight, and just above 4Mbps during the evening....

In September, NBN announced it would be looking to spend AU$4.5 billion to have 75% of its fixed-line network be able to receive 1Gbps speeds by the end of 2023, by offering on-demand upgrades to those on fibre-to-the-node (FttN) connections that wanted higher speeds. NBN said on Tuesday in its second round of consultation that it was still planning for 100Mbps to be the trigger for FttN connections to be upgraded....

The company responsible for the National Broadband Network has spent the past twelve months restoring a 60 kilometre transit link to get the town back on the NBN. “Following the massive rebuild, approximately 1,000 premises in Mallacoota are now ready to connect to the National Broadband Network” Communications Minister Paul Fletcher said on Thursday. “The bushfires last year melted the backhaul cable which completely cut off connectivity to the community....

On Wednesday, HMD Global, Nokia’s parent company, announced the Nokia T20 Tablet. It’s an entry-level tablet that runs Android and starts at $250. There’s a lot to like about the T20 beyond its price tag. It has a 10.4-inch 2K display and a large battery that Nokia claims will power through 7 hours of video calls. Speaking of video calls, it has a front-facing 5MP camera with two microphones and stereo speakers....

I’ve been testing the $899 RedMagic 7 Pro over the past two weeks, daily driving it alongside my iPhone 13 Pro. And while I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the device is capable of being a regular smartphone – its middling cameras are impractical – the 7 Pro is very much one of the most complete gaming phones that I’ve gotten my hands on. When it comes to gaming phones, speed is the name of the game....

Also: CES 2023 tech you can actually buy now The first automakers to partner with Nvidia to make GeForce Now available in its vehicles are Hyundai Motor Group, BYD, and Polestar. Software-defined car owners will now be able to access a full PC-gaming experience in the comfort of their own cars. Front-seat drivers will be able to stream games while the car is parked, and passengers in the back seat can game the entire ride as long as screens are available....

The agreement, which is slated to close sometime during calendar year 2022, is expected to be immediately accretive to Oracle’s earnings, and to provide “a huge additional revenue growth engine for Oracle for years to come as Oracle expands Cerner’s business into many more countries throughout the world.” The purchase of Cerner will give Oracle an instant, large-scale presence in the healthcare IT market. Oracle’s targeting of healthcare is a logical next step for a company that already offers industry’ specific solutions for customers in the financial services, telecom, utilities, pharmaceuticals, hospitality, retail, food & beverage, construction & engineering, manufacturing, and government markets....

The report sent Oracle shares down about 6% in late trading initially, but the stock recouped most of its losses as the forecast emerged during the company’s forecast. CEO Safra Catz remarked that the company “delivered over 7% constant currency revenue growth – our highest quarterly organic revenue growth rate since we began our transition to the cloud.” Added Catz, Also: Oracle beats Q2 results with cloud revenue up 22% Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said the company, during the quarter, “completed development of the multi-cloud version of our MySQL HeatWave open-source database....

That point is underlined in an ambitious new agreement between Archer, a leading urban air mobility company based in California, and the operator of thousands of parking garages in an expansive network that covers more than 70% of the U.S. Archer and REEF will work together to retrofit the top floor of parking garages in dense urban areas in order to accommodate Archer’s all-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle....

Yes, Linux, not Android. Android is based on a modified version of the Linux kernel, and been modified and optimized for use on smartphones and tablets. Also: Flipper Zero: How to install third-party firmware (and why you should) Heavily modified and optimized. But what’s a pure Linux experience on a smartphone going to be like? I’m about to find out. Well, after obstacle after obstacle (Covid-19, supply chain issues, “unprecedented times,” postal strikes, the holidays…), I finally got my hands on one....

The new Polar Pacer Pro brings much of what the Grit X Pro and Vantage V2 offer in a less premium package with a non-touchscreen display. However, at just $299.95, the Polar Pacer Pro actually does everything I need in a GPS sports watch for half the price of the Grit X Pro. Polar’s excellent Precision Prime heart rate monitor, its accurate GPS receiver, wrist-based running power, sleep stages, and recovery data is all there in an affordable watch....

Engineers value its “memory safety guarantees,” which reduce the need to manually manage a program’s memory and, in turn, cut the risk of memory-related security flaws burdening big projects written in “memory unsafe” C or C++, which includes Chrome, Android, the Linux kernel, and Windows. Also: Understanding Microsoft’s grand vision for building the next generation of apps Microsoft drove home this point in 2019 after revealing 70% of its patches in the past 12 years were fixes for memory safety bugs due largely to Windows being written mostly in C and C++....

Key to the project is Spain-based developer Miguel Ojeda, who’s been leading the charge to bring Mozilla-hatched systems programming language Rust to the Linux kernel. He penned an initial request for comment (RFC) about the Rust proposal for the Linux kernel last month, and on Sunday shared his latest RFC on the project. SEE: Hiring Kit: Python developer (TechRepublic Premium) Rust and the Rust compiler are two key elements that developers have taken a liking to, despite a relatively steep learning curve for those who know how to write in C and C++....

Introducing Deeper Connect Nano Decentralized VPN Cybersecurity Hardware, a decentralized VPN solution that works without a subscription. It’s a VPN but with a lot more features, making it a DPN (Decentralized Private Network). Deeper Connect provides you with a fast, secure, and private internet connection that cannot be censored or monitored. Its plug-and-play design makes it easy to use. You can enjoy streaming in HD on any device without bottlenecks and use it on your phone for Wi-Fi security, at home for media streaming, or at work to protect your network traffic....

Python’s importance to today’s tech can’t be overstated. It has become the go-to language for machine learning, in part because of its wealth of software libraries like NumPy. Thanks to those libraries, Python is now arguably the world’s most popular programming language, jostling for top spot with Java, C, and JavaScript, and it’s used by millions of developers, data scientists and finance workers worldwide to crunch big data. SEE: The IT skills gap is getting worse....