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Microsoft just released a new Windows 10 Insider Preview build featuring the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. WSL 2 includes a real Linux kernel that lets you run more Linux software on Windows and with better performance than WSL 1.

This is part of Windows 10 Insider Preview build 18917, released on June 12, 2019. It’s part of the fast ring of updates. You can experiment with it today, although you’ll have to join the Windows Insider program and get unstable builds of Windows 10 on your PC.

Microsoft’s Windows Command Line blog offers more information about WSL 2, complete with an install guide, list of user experience changes, and more documentation. To install WSL 2 on the latest insider build, run the following command in a PowerShell window launched with Administrator permissions:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName VirtualMachinePlatform

This new version of WSL 2 uses Hyper-V features to create a lightweight virtual machine with a minimal Linux kernel. It will still be available on Windows 10 Home, however, even though Hyper-V isn’t normally available on Windows 10 Home. Expect better compatibility with Linux software, including support for Docker, and “dramatic file system performance increases.”

The virtual machine will automatically launch at startup and use a bit of memory in the background, but Microsoft promises it “has a small memory footprint.” You can run the wsl –shutdown command if you ever want to shut down the background VM.

WSL 2 is part of the development builds for Windows 10 20H1, which is expected for release around April 2020. WSL may be part of Windows 10 19H2, expected for release around October 2019, but Microsoft isn’t testing 19H2 yet.

The latest Windows 10 Insider build includes some other useful features, too. You can now head to Settings > Update & Security > Delivery Optimization > Advanced Options to throttle Windows Update. For example, you can set Windows Update to only use 1 Mbps or a specific percentage of your available bandwidth while downloading updates in the background.

Microsoft’s Sunday E3 pressure was all about the games. In fact, while the company did offer some information about hardware and services, the information all arrived fast and furious at the end of the conference. While it’s probably unsurprising that the company had very little to offer in the way of information about its upcoming 8K console, Project Scarlett, most of us expected Project xCloud to get a lot more face time on stage.

The company powered through a whole lot of information about its upcoming streaming offering like it was going out of style (or, perhaps, like the lights were going out at its own theater). The speed and brevity of it all left a number of audience members confused on the specifics — and caused some to speculate that the service night not be as far along as Microsoft had hoped.

We caught up with a few Microsoft reps on our final day at the show to answer some questions. The company is unsurprisingly still mum on a number of key details around the offering. A couple of key things are worth clarifying, though. For starters console stream is not considered a part of Project xCloud. Rather, the ability to play games on one’s own Xbox One remotely is a separate feature that will be coming to users via a software update.

Asked what advantages console streaming has over the parallel xCloud offering, Microsoft’s answer was simple: it’s free. Fair enough. This serves a two-fold purpose. First, it helps differentiate Microsoft’s streaming offerings from Stadia and second, it provides another value proposition for the console itself. As to how performance is expected to differ between console streaming and XCloud, it wouldn’t comment.

As I wrote earlier today, the company does see the potential of a large scale move to the cloud, but anticipates that such a shift is a long ways off. After all, if it didn’t, it likely wouldn’t have announced a new console this week at E3.

Google announced today that it will no longer automatically sync photos between its Drive and Photos services.

“Many of you store your photos and videos on both Google Drive and Google Photos, which keeps them safe and easy to access,” a new post to the Google Photos blog explains. “We’ve heard feedback that the connection between these services is confusing, so next month, we’re making some changes to simplify the experience across Drive and Photos.”

Today, new photos and videos that appear in a user’s Google Photos automatically appear in that user’s Google Drive as well. And vice versa. The problem, as it turns out, is that users would delete photos from one service but not intend to delete them in the other. So Google is making changes to prevent this kind of accidental deletion.

So, here’s what’s happening.

Starting in July, new photos and videos added to Drive will no longer automatically appear in Photos. Likewise, new photos and videos added to Photos will not be added to the Photos folder in Drive too.

When you delete photos and videos in Drive, they will not be removed from Photos. And vice versa.

Additionally, Google will add an “Upload from Drive” feature to Photos that lets users choose items to copy to Drive. Copied items are not linked back to the original service. So when you delete one in Drive, the original in Photos will remain. “Since photos and videos will no longer sync across both products, items copied in Original Quality will count towards your storage quota in both Drive and Photos,” Google notes.

Backup and Sync will continue to work as before using the Windows and Mac clients. But items uploaded using Backup and Sync in Original Quality to both services will count only once towards your total online storage quota.

Any photos or videos that were uploaded prior to this change will remain in Photos. Your Google Photos folder in Drive will remain but will no longer update automatically as before.

In a rare move by any tech company, Google confirmed the existence of the Pixel 4several months ahead its anticipated release in October. The tech giant not only posted the news on its own Made By Google Twitter account, but it also included an image of the phone, which depicts a square camera bump, with multiple rear cameras. Judging by the reactions from the tweet, many were taken aback by the information — not due to the phone itself, but because Google decided to unveil the news at all.

To drop an upcoming device’s name and an official image this early is unusual. Despite numerous rumors, rendered images and leaked specs, companies like Apple, Samsung and Google generally like to keep mum about their product announcements until they hold official events like Apple’s developers conference and September iPhone event, Samsung Unpacked and Google I/O, where the company took the wraps off its latest Pixel 3A and Pixel 3A XL. Google declined a request for comment, but we have a few guesses why Google made such a bizarre move.

Reason 1: It can claim it didn’t copy the iPhone 11

The most popular theory is that Google wanted to get ahead of any accusations that it copied Apple and its next iPhone. For several months, the upcoming iPhone 11 has been rumored to have a square camera bump too. Because the iPhone is expected to come out in September and Pixel phones usually launch in October, it would be easy to conclude that Google “copied” Apple’s design. (BTW: The camera layout isn’t altogether unique — the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, for example, also has such a design.) To avoid such talk, Google could have decided to whip out the image early to say it had the design in mind long before the iPhone’s launch, knowing that Apple will remain tight-lipped about any iPhone features until September.

Reason 2: The Pixel 4 might release earlier than October

Four months is a pretty long time to tease a product ahead of its assumed launch date. Perhaps Google unveiled this info in June because the Pixel 4 might actually not debut in October. Maybe the phone is coming earlier, like in September (to position it even closer in competition to the iPhone) or even August. This would be a strange move though, since the Pixel 3A and 3A XL were just announced in May and it’d be a good idea for Google to allow some time between announcements of its two phone series.

Reason 3: Google doesn’t care anymore!

When Google announced the Pixel 3 last year, it was pretty much one of the most leaked phones at the time. Most outlets already had a general idea about what the phone would look like (Engadget unboxed the thing three days before its launch) and a lot of the rumored specs turned out to be accurate. Google even managed to poke fun at this fact before the Pixel 3’s launch (see below). The same applied to the Pixel 3A. Due to all the leaks, people got wind that Google was working on a midtier variant of the Pixel, and we even peeped its new Purple-ish color before Google I/O.

Because we now live in such an era where it’s so hard to keep a lid on product announcements, Google might have just decided to just say “screw it.” If photos of the Pixel 4’s camera was going to get leaked anyway (and it did), the company might as well jump on it, too. At least it can then get ahead of the news and control to some extent whatever narrative tech enthusiasts cook up. I, for one, welcome this energy and wouldn’t mind more information from Google.

“You’re probably asking, ‘what is a gaming browser?,’ ” Opera PM Maciej Kocemba says in the opening of the Opera GX introduction video. Fair enough. My first thought when the Norwegian browser company mentioned the concept to me was something akin to Google Stadia, with remote game streaming.

Turns out a gaming browser — in this instance at least — is more about providing a custom browser for PC gamers, rather than a browser that does the heavy lifting for gaming itself. Instead, the system is more interested in minimizing system requirements as gamers game.

The browser’s central feature is the GX Control panel, which lets users determine how much of the system’s CPU and RAM are allotted to the browser. The idea being that gamers can, say, stream content from Twitch while playing, without slowing their computer to a crawl.

“Running a game might require a lot of effort from your machine. Even more so if you are streaming while you play,” says Kocemba in a release tied to today’s E3 announcement. “Before Opera GX, gamers often shut down their browsers in order to not slow down their gaming experience. We came up with the GX Control feature to make people’s games run more smoothly without requiring them to compromise on what they do on the Web.”

The other big piece here is Twitch integration, letting users log in to the service directly from the browser sidebar. They’ll also get notifications when streamers they follow go live. There are various other touches through out, including “sounds and animation inspired by gaming consoles” and other customizable design features.

You probably think this is all pretty gimmicky, and honestly, you’re not really wrong. Those who are interested can check out early access to the browser at E3 this week.

AMD took the stage at E3 to announce its “Navi” family of GPUs. The company’s new graphics cards are officially the AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700. The 5700 series is launching July 7, making the GPUs a one-two punch alongside AMD’s Ryzen 3000 series CPUs.

AMD isn’t tackling the flagship GPU market with the 5700 series. Instead, the company is aiming for more mainstream pricing with mainstream performance: the 5700XT is $449, while the 5700 is $379. AMD is positioning the cards against Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2070 ($499) and 2060 ($349), respectively, and claims performance wins in each comparison.

The cards introduce AMD’s new “RDNA” architecture, which AMD says has 1.25x performance-per-clock and 1.5x performance-per-watt over the previous generation. The chips are built on TSMC’s 7nm manufacturing process, a significant shrink from the 12nm process used on the Radeon RX 590, and on Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 2080. The Navi die is significantly smaller than the previous-generation Vega design, with a die area of only 251mm2 compared to the 495 mm2 die area for Vega. The smaller die should make the Navi significantly cheaper to produce than Vega.

For specs, the top-end Radeon RX 5700 XT has 40 compute units with 2560 stream processors total. AMD gives three numbers for the clock rate on the XT: a 1605MHz “Base” clock, a 1755MHz “Game” clock, and a 1905MHz “Boost” clock. As usual, the cheaper 5700 disables compute units and lowers the clock rate, so you have 36 compute units for 2304 stream processor total, a base clock of 1465MHz, game clock of 1625MHz, and a boost clock of 1725MHz.

If any of these clock rates are too conservative for you, AMD is promising the 5700 XT is “overclocking ready” thanks to a power solution with room to grown. Both of AMD’s reference designs come with 8GB of GDDR6 memory.

For cooling, AMD’s reference design is a blower-style card with an aluminum shroud and back plate. A vapor chamber draws heat into the heatsink, and everything gets blown out the back of the card. Blower cooling designs have the downside of producing a lot of noise, but AMD is promising a “quiet” card thanks to an “acoustically tuned” design. If you’re unhappy with the cooler design, partner-produced cards with alternative cooling solutions should be out eventually. The cards both take a 8-pin + 6-pin power-supply connection, with AMD providing Board Power figures of 225W for the XT and 180W for the cheaper card.

If you get the whole AMD package in July (meaning a Ryzen 3000 CPU, an X570 motherboard, and a Radeon 5700 card), you’ll be all up and running with the new PCI Express 4.0 bus standard. This faster interconnect will be great for next-gen SSDs and 200Gbps (!) Ethernet controllers. But for video cards, we haven’t seen a compelling use case yet. Still, it provides room for upgrades!

All these specs are nice to know, but they don’t really tell us anything about actual performance. As always, it’s best to wait for independent benchmarks, and if you’re in the market for a GPU, it’s probably also best to see if Nvidia does anything in response.

And speaking of Nvidia’s response, the company has been teasing a “Super” GeForce product for a few weeks now. The rumors point to “Super” cards being up-clocked editions of Nvidia’s existing cards and price drops for some non-super cards, making the company more competitive with AMD’s freshly announced lineup. Again though, benchmarks will tell the real story. AMD also doesn’t have an answer this generation for the real-time raytracing technology that Nvidia introduced with the RTX 2080 Ti. But given the huge hit in performance that ray tracing causes for even Nvidia’s fastest cards (and the limited game support for raytracing), it’s not a huge loss for AMD.

Regardless of what happens between AMD and Nvidia in the PC graphics card wars, AMD GPUs promise to be almost everywhere else in the future. At the beginning of the presentation, AMD talked about the company’s design wins, pointing out that AMD is supplying graphics chips to both the next-gen Xbox and Playstation consoles, Apple’s Mac Pro, and Google’s Stadia game-streaming platform. AMD also recently inked an RDNA licensing deal with Samsung, which will build the graphics technology into its Exynos SoCs for smartphones and tablets.

Apple and Microsoft teamed up to create an iCloud Drive experience that will hopefully resolve some compatibility issues. A brand new iCloud for Windows app is available today in the Microsoft Store for Windows 10 users. The iCloud app will use the same technology as Microsoft’s OneDrive’s On-Demand feature — a very rare collaboration from tech’s two biggest rivals. Users can now easily access photos, videos, mail, calendars, files and other information from their iCloud accounts from their PC or smartphone.

Any proud Windows user who has bit the bullet and sprung for an Apple device will probably agree: the old iCloud for Windows was not great. Last fall, PCs with iCloud installed were even blocked from installing the latest Windows 10 update. While Apple eventually released an iCloud update that was compatible with Windows 10 a month later, PC users still encountered slow sync speeds and other issues.

It’s no surprise that the products from tech’s most notorious rivalry mix like oil and water. But loyalty to one brand of technology is becoming increasingly quaint as households accumulate more devices. An entirely re-designed app powered by Microsoft technology seems to suggest that Apple wants to make life easier for all users, not just its core set of iOS devotees.

The Atari VCS finally has a launch date. Pre-orders for the retro console are available now at GameStop, Walmart, and directly from Atari, with units scheduled to ship in March 2020.

Those who backed the project through the crowdfunding site IndieGoGo can expect their units later this year.

Starting at $249.99 for a console with 4 GB RAM, Atari’s new device costs quite a bit more than the NES Classic or PlayStation Classic did at launch ($59.99 and $99.99 respectively, though Sony’s console has seen several price drops). In fairness, though, it’s a much more powerful system. Rather than just sticking an emulator in a hunk of plastic and calling it a day, Atari outfitted its new device with an AMD processor and 4K and HDR support. It’s essentially a Linux PC loaded up with old Atari games.

Atari is also releasing a classic joystick and modern controller alongside the console. The base model, the Atari VCS 400 doesn’t include either gamepad, nor does the $279.99 Atari VCS 800 (with 8 GB RAM). Sold separately, the joystick is $49.99 and the controller is $59.99. Atari is offering an “All In” bundle with the VCS 800 and both the joystick and controller for $389.99.

While the stand-alone consoles only come in black, each retailer has a different exclusive color console included in the All In bundles. Walmart’s is a “Kevlar gold”, GameStop’s is the standard “onyx”, and Atari itself has the very retro-looking “black walnut”.

Atari will be showing off the new console during this year’s E3 conference, so expect hands-on impressions to start trickling out soon. In the meantime, check out more images of the console and gamepads below.

Apple is reportedly looking into acquiring Intel’s German smartphone modem business. The acquisition could help Apple’s attempts to develop its own 5G chip for the iPhone, The Information said Tuesday, citing four people briefed on the Apple-Intel discussions.

Apple had originally used modems from Germany’s Infineon when it launched the iPhone 10 years ago, before switching to Qualcomm in 2011. Intel then bought Infineon in 2011, but those chips weren’t used again until the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in 2016 after a dispute over Qualcomm’s licensing fees.

When Apple and Qualcomm settled their legal battle and reached a multiyear 5G chip deal in April this year, Intel exited the 5G phone modem business. CEO Bob Swan confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that the decision was due to Apple and Qualcomm.

Intel told CNET it has seen “significant interest” in its 5G modem business, but did not confirm which companies have been in contact.

“We have hired outside advisors to help us assess strategic options for our wireless 5G phone business,” the emailed statement said. “We have created value both in our portfolio of wireless modem products and in our intellectual property.”

The news follows reports last month that Apple may not have a homegrown 5G modem ready for its iPhones until late 2024 or early 2025.

Chipsets are one of the most complex and expensive parts of a smartphone. By producing its own, Apple could reduce reliance on outside companies.

Even with Qualcomm’s help, Apple isn’t expected to launch a 5G iPhone until 2020, despite 5G Android phones from Samsung, Huawei, LG, OnePlus, Lenovo/Motorola, ZTE, Xiaomi and Oppo already announced or available.

Already launched in the US by Verizon, by AT&T and by Sprint, 5G is the next-generation network being used by smartphones to provide faster speeds and more capacity.

Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Today, Apple is pushing out a new update to iOS, its software for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch—but this update is targeted at fixing an issue on just one device: the iPhone 8 Plus.

iOS 12.3.2 doesn’t seem to do anything else worth remarking upon. Apple’s notes simply say:

iOS 12.3.2 resolves an issue that could cause Camera to capture Portrait mode photos without depth effect on some iPhone 8 Plus devices.

Updates don’t get much more minor than this. Apple typically releases updates that contain new features for macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS simultaneously. But sometimes the company updates only one operating system at a time when deploying a targeted bug fix, as is the case here. If you don’t have an iPhone 8 Plus, this update isn’t for you.

Portrait Mode is Apple’s camera feature that uses machine-learning-based techniques and the dual cameras on some iPhone models to analyze photos and create a depth-of-field effect. It’s related to Portrait Lighting, which only works on the iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR. Portrait Lighting lets you change the lighting, depth of field, or other features via various presets after the photo has been taken. We’ve been consistently unimpressed by it in our reviews—it fails to address glasses frames, it leaves strange artifacts around frizzy hair, and so on. Machine-learning-based features like this are still not perfect.

Apple last updated iOS with iOS 12.3.1, which hit supported devices two weeks ago. That update fixed a bug related to VoLTE calls, addressed a problem that allowed unknown senders’ messages to appear even if you have enabled “Filter Unknown Senders,” and fixed an issue that prevented some users from reporting junk texts. Apple last released a major update with new features just shy of a month ago: iOS 12.3 added a completely overhauled TV app, implemented AirPlay for new devices like Samsung TVs, and fixed numerous bugs.