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Tech News
Researchers describe Ataraxos, a decision-making system for the imperfect-information board game Stratego. It combines two interdependent self-play reinforcement learning processes—one for choosing piece set-ups, one for choosing moves—built on transformer networks, alongside a belief network trained on self-play games and a search procedure used at test time.
Google confirmed it has resolved a bug that caused the Google Photos app to freeze after users interacted with its editing tools. The company says the fix is included in the latest app update, version 7.94.0.988717361, available now on the Play Store.
Google announced new subscription billing tools for Google Play, including usage-based billing that lets apps like AI services charge from a prepaid balance that auto-tops-up. It's also adding multi-quantity subscriptions for organizations, mixed one-time/subscription checkouts, and cross-developer subscription bundles, alongside tests of smarter grace periods, cancellation discounts, and winback offers.
A developer working with a batch of old Android 6.0.1 devices describes turning to lightweight, de-googled software after finding the experience surprisingly enjoyable. When attempting to publish a text editor called Tabby on the Play Store, the app was rejected and Google attached a screenshot from an unrelated app containing explicit content as justification; an appeal was denied without explanation. The developer suspects the issue may stem from Google's automatic listing translations linking to a dubious site, and plans to distribute apps via F-Droid and itch.io instead.
Valve has integrated Pyrowave, a video codec built by open-source developer Hans-Kristian Arntzen specifically for in-home game streaming, into the Steam beta client's Remote Play feature. Unlike general-purpose codecs such as AVC or AV1, Pyrowave is designed to cut encoding and decoding delays and avoid chroma subsampling artifacts that cause blurry text, though it reportedly requires roughly 5 to 10 times more bandwidth to do so.
A developer detailed a method to intercept the PS5's built-in broadcast feature by spoofing DNS so the console's RTMP stream, normally sent to Twitch's ingest servers, is redirected to a custom server instead. The workaround avoids using Remote Play or a capture card to get PS5 gameplay onto platforms like Discord.
Kvaesitso is an open-source, search-first Android launcher that is distributed only through GitHub and F-Droid rather than the Play Store. Installing it requires downloading an APK from the project's GitHub releases page and enabling installation from unknown sources, and on some Samsung Galaxy phones users must also disable the Auto Blocker security feature.
Microsoft's Windows Subsystem for Android, once planned to let Windows 11 run Android apps natively, was discontinued in 2024. Users now rely on third-party emulators like BlueStacks and NetEase's MuMuPlayer, or Google's Play Games for PC, which streams a limited catalog of opted-in Android games via a lightweight virtual machine. Windows 11's Phone Link can also mirror a connected Android phone's screen and apps, though it runs the apps on the phone rather than the PC.
Conversations, the federated Android messaging app launched in 2014 by its solo developer, is ending its paid Google Play Store distribution model. The developer says Play Store sales had served as a steady, dependable income stream for over a decade, supplementing project-based development contracts, consulting work and grants.
Google has rolled out a Play services update that lets many Android 12+ phones show their IMEI number on the lock screen alongside emergency info like contacts and medical details. The feature is optional and can help prove ownership if a device is lost, especially as newer phones like the Pixel 11 series drop physical SIM trays that once displayed the number.
F-Droid, the open-source Android app repository, released version 2.0 with automatic update installation and a unified installer that leverages a new pre-approval API enabled by EU Digital Markets Act rulings against Google. The release comes as F-Droid displays a banner warning users about Google's upcoming developer verification requirements, which could restrict distribution of unverified apps on Android devices.
Google has published a Play Store listing for its Create My Widget app, first teased at I/O 2026, showing how it will work on Android phones and Googlebook laptops. The app lets users generate custom widgets using natural-language prompts processed by Gemini, with preset categories like combo widgets, weather alerts and daily briefs as starting points.