Comment on Europe is living under Microsoft’s digital killswitch

Enlarge / The "Xbox Series V" was a social media hoax, but the idea of a portable Xbox seems to still have legs inside Microsoft. (credit: Reddit) The extremely long-standing rumors regarding Microsoft making a portable game console got a strong shot in the arm over the weekend from none other than Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Eve Ettinger realized something needed to change. Stuck working remotely in a rented farmhouse in rural Virginia, they felt isolated and yearned for community and support. “I wanted to have a housing situation that was more focused on long term stability and sustainability,” says Ettinger, 35, who uses they/them pronouns.

Enlarge / The Recall feature provides a timeline of screenshots and a searchable database of text, thoroughly tracking everything about a person's PC usage. (credit: Microsoft) On Friday, Microsoft announced major changes to its upcoming Recall feature after overwhelming criticism from security researchers, the press, and its users. Microsoft is turning Recall off by default when users set up PCs that are compatible with the feature, and it's adding additional authentication and encryption that will make it harder to access another user's Recall data on the same PC. It's likely not a coincidence that Microsoft also quietly pulled the build of the Windows 11 24H2 update that it had been testing in its Release Preview channel for Windows Insiders.

Enlarge / Virgin Galactic's VSS Unity spacecraft launches on Saturday. (credit: Virgin Galactic) On Saturday, the VSS Unity space plane made its final flight, carrying four passengers to an altitude of 54.4 miles (87.5 km) above the New Mexico desert. The spacecraft will now be retired after just seven commercial space flights, all made within the last year. Although the flight was characterized by its chief executive Michael Colglazier as a "celebratory moment" for Virgin Galactic, the company now finds itself at a crossroads. After an impressive but brief flurry of spaceflight activity—seven human spaceflights in a year, even to suborbital space, is unprecedented for a private company—Virgin Galactic will now be grounded again for at least two years.

Enlarge / Looking more like a refrigerator than ever before. (credit: Microsoft) A new version of Microsoft's top-end Xbox Series X will launch without a disc drive for the first time this holiday season. The new "Digital Edition" console option—which sports 1TB of storage and an Xbox Series S-like "Robot White" color scheme—will be available "in select markets" for an estimated retail price of $449 (or 500 euros).

Enlarge Tesla shareholders will vote on Thursday on whether to restore the mammoth pay package for chief executive Elon Musk that was struck down by a Delaware judge this year. But that is not expected to close the book on a legal saga that has consumed the electric-car maker and the leading US business law court that dared to defy Musk and his overseers on the company’s board. In asking shareholders to approve of the same 2018 pay package that was nullified by the Delaware Court of Chancery in January, Tesla is relying on a legal principle known as “ratification,” in which the validity of a corporate action can be cemented by a shareholder vote.