Category: Technica Aquarius

Cortana on an iPhone. (credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant is clearly winding down—the feature is still available in the desktop versions of Windows, but it’s no longer included in a default install of Windows 11, and the mobile app was discontinued back in March.

But the future once looked bright for the chipper virtual assistant, according to former Microsoft Product Manager Sandeep Paruchuri in an interview with the Big Bets newsletter. Paruchuri speaks at length about Cortana’s development as a feature for Windows Phone 8.1 from its beginnings as a passion project with a small team.

The Cortana feature was only officially called “Cortana” after the codename leaked during development—another early suggestion was “Alyx,” and then-CEO Steve Ballmer tried to name it “Bingo” as a “parting gift” before handing the reins to current CEO Satya Nadella. (Ballmer had “poor product taste,” says Paruchuri, in what we in the tech biz call “an understatement.”) Cortana’s developers were inspired by Siri but wanted their voice assistant to be more proactive, making suggestions based on context and user data rather than merely responding to direct input. The team also wanted Cortana to have more of a personality than Siri or Google Now, which was helped along by Cortana’s Halo voice actor, Jen Taylor. 

Enlarge / A worker picks up trash in front of the new logo in front of Meta’s headquarters on October 28, 2021, in Menlo Park, Calif. (credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

After a year of stunning and damning revelations, Meta, formerly Facebook, is facing calls from investors to allow an independent assessment of the company’s audit and risk oversight committee.

Investors and a public interest nonprofit have sent a letter to Meta’s corporate secretary requesting that its proposal be included in the company’s annual proxy to be voted on by shareholders. 

“Shareholders request the board commission an independent assessment of the Audit and Risk Oversight Committee’s capacities and performance in overseeing company risks to public safety and the public interest and in supporting strategic risk oversight on these issues by the full board,” says the letter, which was obtained by Axios.

Enlarge / Google is putting more emphasis on Android apps on Chromebooks. (credit: Google)

The number of people using Android Apps on Chromebooks grew 50 percent year over year, according to a blog post from Chrome OS product managers Fahd Imtiaz and Sanj Nathwani this week. The execs cited internal Google data recorded from 2020-2021.

In 2021, as some smartphones moved to Android 12, Google worked on updating Chromebooks to support Android 11, while attempting to boost security and performance by bringing Android on Chrome OS to a virtual machine, rather than a container. The company also improved its general usability, using runtime improvements to make the resizing and scaling of Android apps on Chromebooks work better, as well as app rendering.

As the developer-focused blog noted, Chromebooks on Chrome OS 93 or newer (the latest is Chrome OS 96) automatically run Android apps made for mobile devices in a window that’s set to stay in a “phone or tablet orientation.” And, yes, you can turn this feature off.