(NEW YORK) — Holiday shopping season has kicked off earlier than ever.
Amazon announced Monday it is offering “Black Friday-worthy deals” and early access to deep discounts across every category.
Target launched its own “Deal Days” promotion from Oct. 10 – 12 that boasts savings on thousands of items online, through their app and in nearly 2,000 stores. The major retailer also launched a holiday price match guarantee, according to its website.
Jennifer Smith, a logistics and supply chain reporter for the Wall Street Journal said retailers are in a unique position this holiday shopping season.
“They’re balancing, on the one hand, the need to make sure they have items in stock when people do start shopping with wanting to make sure that they have plenty of time to get them because it could take a little bit longer, particularly for e-commerce, for things to arrive at your home,” she told Good Morning America.
October typically marks the busiest shopping month of the year as retailers stock up for Black Friday, but with just three months ahead of Christmas, the supply chain in the U.S. has faced massive pandemic-related shipping issues, shortages and delays.
Microsoft reported issues getting parts needed to build its new Xbox consoles.
“There are multiple kind of pinch points in that process. And I think regretfully it’s going to be with us for months and months, definitely through the end of this calendar year,” XBOX’s head of gaming Phil Spencer said in a statement.
Nike has felt the recent supply crunch and as first reported by NBC, is working to shift footwear production out of Vietnam where factories remain closed due to COVID restrictions to places like China and Indonesia in an attempt to prevent further delays.
Fast fashion clothing companies like H&M and BooHoo said their profits are likely to suffer because of rising supply chain costs and bottlenecks in major ports coast to coast.
Other retailers have attempted to alleviate product shortages by flying in goods by air freight, while Target, Walmart and Home Depot have chartered their own ships to avoid backlogged ports and to make sure they’re stocked for holidays.
The CEO of MGA Entertainment Inc., one of the world’s largest toymakers, said supply issues are the worst he’s seen in over 40 years.
“You have the jams you have all the backlog, logistic problems and inflation, they’re all gathered up,” Isaac Larian told GMA. “So it’s going to be a tough couple of years, in my opinion.”
Like many other experts have urged, Larian added, “my kind of advice is — please shop early.”
(NEW YORK) — On Monday, the crash of Facebook and the company’s apps threw the Internet into disarray and plunged billions of users into digital darkness. The outage illustrated how essential Facebook’s services have become as well as the risks of its dominance, particularly in developing countries.
Facebook said in a blog post on Tuesday the crash was caused by an error during routine maintenance, which took down global data servers.
During the outage, Facebook’s website and app were inaccessible, as were WhatsApp and Instagram, two of the company’s most popular acquisitions.
While the outage was relatively brief — around six hours — some researchers said it points to the downsides of a growing reliance on a single company’s services.
“I think it speaks to the vulnerability of our dependence on these platforms,” said Philip Roessler, a professor at William & Mary, at which he co-directs the Digital Inclusion and Governance Lab.
Roessler said that in countries where he does his research — places like Kenya and Malawi — WhatsApp is an essential part of the communications infrastructure, especially as mobile customers take advantage of WhatsApp-dedicated bundles that are much cheaper than standard mobile data.
“It’s become this kind of backbone of these emerging economies,” he said, highlighting how businesses use WhatsApp to communicate with customers and suppliers alike, while workers use it to find jobs.
WhatsApp is also valuable in places without universal literacy, Roessler said, because the platform allows users to send voice-based messages.
In Brazil, local broadcaster Globo reported that the outage temporarily crippled some small businesses, rendering them unable to fill orders.
The implications of a growing dependence on Facebook’s services go beyond the economic, according to Ryan Shandler, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford who highlighted the role played by social media platforms in aiding free speech and assembly.
“People have become dependent on this platform to realize basic civil and human rights,” he said.
In 2014, Facebook paid $19 billion to acquire WhatsApp. The messaging app’s rise to prominence, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jon Callas, was due in part to cost. The data required to use the service, Callas said, could be cheaper than a traditional text message, also known as SMS.
“It was fantastically cheap and it was certainly as good as SMS, so lots and lots of people started using it as a replacement for that,” Callas said.
According to data from the digital analytics company Similarweb, Whatsapp is the most popular mobile messaging app in several of the world’s most populous countries, including India, Indonesia, Nigeria and Brazil.
In July, Facebook said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that its apps had around 3.51 billion users.
While the crash sparked a range of humorous responses — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey joked on his own platform about buying Facebook.com, which was erroneously listed as for sale during the outage — its consequences could have been more serious, said Roessler, adding: “If it had lasted much longer, you know, the effects would have been quite deep and severe.”
(NEW YORK) — Volvo is recalling over 460,000 cars due to an air bag defect that could result in passenger injury.
The recall affects older sedans, including 2001-2009 S60s and 2001-2006 S80s.
According to documents from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the driver’s air bag inflator “may explode during deployment,” which could result in sharp metal fragments striking the driver or other occupants. There has been at least one death due to the defect, according to the documents.
“Our investigations have identified an issue where driver airbag inflators may under certain circumstances be subjected to excessive pressures during deployment potentially resulting in an inflator rupture,” a Volvo spokesperson said. “The excessive pressure can occur if the inflator has been subjected to elevated levels of moisture and high inflator temperatures frequently during its lifetime.”
To remedy the issue, Volvo will contact owners of cars subject to the recall. Dealerships will replace the driver’s air bag for free.
(NEW YORK) — Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers on Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, which found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls. Among the findings were that Instagram made body image issues worse for 1 in 3 teens.
The Journal’s reporting has sparked a fierce backlash amid accusations the tech giant publicly downplayed what it knew about how potentially harmful Instagram could be while also doing nothing to prevent it.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Committee Chair Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in his opening remarks. “This month, a whistleblower approached my office to provide information about Facebook and Instagram. Thanks to documents provided by that whistleblower, as well as extensive public reporting by The Wall Street Journal and others, we now have deep insight into Facebook’s relentless campaign to recruit and exploit young users.”
“We now know that Facebook routinely puts profits ahead of kids’ online safety,” he added. “We know it chooses the growth of its products over the well-being of our children, and we now know that it is in defensively delinquent in acting to protect them.”
In the wake of the Wall Street Journal expose, Facebook announced earlier this week that it was “pausing” development of an Instagram for Kids platform, but stopped short of scrapping it.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, faced bipartisan scrutiny as she defended the company during the hearing that lasted some three hours. She denied Blumenthal’s claims.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Davis stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
“We undertook this work to inform internal conversations about teens’ most negative perceptions of Instagram,” she added. “It did not measure causal relationships between Instagram and real-world issues.”
Davis said the reporting “implied that the results were surprising and that we hid this research,” which she said wasn’t true and that the company has discussed the “strengths and weaknesses of social media and well-being publicly for more than a decade.”
She also highlighted aspects of Facebook’s in-house research that she said the Journal didn’t include in recent stories, such as reports that Instagram made “sadness” and “loneliness” better for a majority of teenage girls.
Davis said they have removed some 600,000 accounts on Instagram alone between June and August for not meeting the age requirement of 13 years old. She also said the company has “put in place multiple protections to create safe and age-appropriate experiences for people between the ages of 13 and 17.”
The hearing comes as Big Tech has come under increased scrutiny from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle over myriad issues, from allowing the spread of misinformation to allegations of political censorship. Lawmakers on Thursday compared Instagram’s policies to Big Tobacco’s previous tactics to attract users before there was government intervention.
Brooke Erin Duffy, a professor of communication at Cornell University whose research focuses on the intersection of media, culture and technology, told ABC News via email on Thursday that Big Tech’s self-regulation hasn’t worked.
Remarks from Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., referring to “traditional media’s regulation of material for children — including limitations on advertising that have long guided the television industry — attest to a growing recognition that external regulation of the platforms is critical,” Duffy said. “While Big Tech has long flaunted its mechanisms of self-regulation, these have failed — and continue to fail — its users.”
Duffy said another key takeaway from Davis’ testimony was “a refusal to agree to a long-term promise to abandon plans of further developing Instagram for Kids.” She called the initiative “part of a long-term strategy by Big Tech to court younger — and less witting — users who the platforms can inevitably collect data from.”
Lawmakers on Thursday called for the need to update the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
In prepared remarks, Davis defended building an Instagram “for tweens,” noting that other companies such as YouTube and TikTok already have developed versions of their app for those under 13.
“The principle is the same: It’s much better for kids to use a safer, more age-appropriate version of social media apps than the alternative,” Davis said. “That said, we recognize how important it is to get this right.”
“We have heard your concerns, and that is why we announced that we are pausing the project to take more time,” she added. “We’ll keep listening to parents, keep talking with policymakers and regulators, keep taking guidance from experts and researchers, and we’ll revisit this project at a later date.”
(WASHINGTON) — A Senate subcommittee on Tuesday is hearing from a whistleblower who claims Facebook manipulated content it knew was harmful to young users, a day after the social media giant experienced an apparently unrelated massive outage.
Frances Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” has been cooperating with a Senate Commerce subcommittee as part of its ongoing efforts to assess potential regulations for the platform. Haugen is expected to tell lawmakers on Tuesday about evidence she reportedly has showing that the company intentionally ignored proof of its potentially harmful impact on users.
“Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” she told “60 Minutes.”
Facebook has publicly refuted Haugen’s claims.
Here are the latest developments. All times Eastern:
Oct 05, 8:57 am
Whistleblower to testify before Senate panel
Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist turned whistleblower, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee at 10 a.m. on Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users in a hearing entitled, “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower. “
Beyond alleging Facebook’s knowledge of its platforms’ negative impact on teenagers and young girls, Haugen has reportedly come forward with documents showing the social media giant has also ignored but is aware of how hate speech and misinformation are emphasized on their sites.
Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” has been cooperating with the offices of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., chair and ranking member of the Senate committee that is assessing potential regulations for the social media giant.
(WASHINGTON) — The Facebook whistleblower who unearthed documents she says shows the company had knowledge of its platforms’ negative impact will appear before a Senate subcommittee Tuesday.
Frances Haugen, who revealed her identity during a Sunday interview on CBS’ 60 Minutes has been cooperating with a Senate Commerce subcommittee as part of its ongoing efforts to assess potential regulations for the social media giant.
Documents obtained by Haugen, a former product manager at Facebook, led to a series from the Wall Street Journal that reported that Facebook commissioned studies about and knew of potential harm that it was causing from negative or inflammatory content and did not act to stop it. Among the findings cited in the report were that Instagram made body image issues worse for one in three teens.
ABC News has not independently reviewed these documents, but Haugen is expected to tell the Senate subcommittee about the evidence she reportedly has that she says shows that the company intentionally ignored evidence of its potentially harmful impact.
“There were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen alleged on 60 Minutes on Sunday. “And Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests like making more money.”
Facebook has publicly refuted Haugen’s claims, pointing to investments in security that the company has made in recent years.
“Every day our teams have to balance protecting the ability of people to express themselves openly with the need to keep our platform a safe and positive place,” Lena Pietsch, the director of policy communications for Facebook, said in a statement Sunday. “To suggest we encourage bad content or do nothing is just not true.”
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs, said in a CNN interview on Sunday those making accusations that the company is commissioning research to “deliberately” brush it aside have it “back to front.”
“If we didn’t want to address those questions, we wouldn’t commission the research in the first place,” Clegg said.
Haugen’s career has included stops at Google, Pinterest and other social media companies, but she claimed what she saw at Facebook was “substantially worse.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the Senate Commerce subcommittee on Consumer Protections, Product Safety and Data Security, said in a tweet that he’s been speaking with Haugen in the lead-up to her testimony.
“From her first visit with my office, I’ve admired her backbone & bravery in revealing terrible truths about one of the world’s most powerful, implacable corporate giants,” Blumenthal said in a tweet. “Facebook’s actions make clear that we cannot trust it to police itself. We must consider stronger oversight, effective protections for children, & tools for parents, among the needed reforms.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the top Republican on the Senate subcommittee that will hear from Haugen, said it has been “fascinating” to comb over documents that Haugen provided the committee.
“What we want to know is how much data is Facebook capturing and what are they doing with that data, how long do they keep it, are they sharing with third parties, are they getting permission when they are datamining these children,” Blackburn said on Fox Business on Monday.
It is not clear how much information Haugen has shared with the committee in advance of her testimony, but during her interview Sunday, Haugen said she took thousands of pages of documents from Facebook so that “no one can question that this is real.”
Haugen also alleged on CBS that Facebook decided to ease safeguards put in place to stop the spread of disinformation during the 2020 election season, which she says contributed to the Jan. 6 attack on the United States Capitol.
In an internal memo obtained by the New York Times, Clegg refuted that allegation as well.
“Social media has had a big impact on society in recent years, and Facebook is often a place where much of this debate plays out,” Clegg wrote. “But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization.”
Haugen’s appearance before the committee Tuesday comes as part of an ongoing effort by Congress to assess how to regulate massive social media companies such as Facebook.
Last week, in a hearing before the same subcommittee that Haugen will appear before, lawmakers accused Facebook of taking a page from “big tobacco’s playbook” by hiding research about what they consider to be its addictive and harmful nature.
Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, faced bipartisan scrutiny as she defended the company during the hearing that lasted some three hours.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Davis stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
(MENLO PARK, Calif.) — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back.
The apps, owned by Facebook, stopped working Monday for millions of users across the U.S., according to outage site Down Detector.
Both the mobile and web browser editions of the apps were not working as of 11:42 a.m. ET, the site reported.
They were down for more than six hours.
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us,” Facebook said Monday evening, once the apps began working again.
Later on Monday, the company explained why the outage occurred.
“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” Facebook said in a statement.
Despite the many theories that have been circling the internet since the outage, Facebook said it has no evidence that any user data was compromised during the disruption.
“Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime,” they said.
On Monday afternoon, when the outage was first reported, a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The company added that it was experiencing “networking issues” and gave no timeline for a fix.
“Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now,” Facebook said at the time. “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible”
The Instagram and Facebook outages come shortly after a whistleblower came forward and claimed to CBS News that the company could do more to protect against hate speech and misinformation but prioritizes profits over its users.
Following the Sunday “60 Minutes” interview with the whistleblower, identified as Frances Haugen, a data scientist, the company put out a statement defending itself.
“We’ve invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority,” the company said in a statement. “If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”
After the whistleblower’s identity was made public, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., announced the Senate will hold a hearing in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee Tuesday to hear from Haugen about Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users.
Facebook’s stock took a severe hit Monday following the whistleblower’s revelations and the outage, recording its worst day of the year. At closing, the stock was trading at $326.23 a share, down 16.78 points or 4.89%.
The situation promoted other social media sites to make some fun jokes.
Twitter’s official account tweeted, “Hello literally everyone,” Monday afternoon.
The tweet prompted several funny replies from other major accounts, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks, which tweeted, “Perfect time for a coffee break.”
Twitter users later on Monday reported some issues with the app due to an increase in users, but Twitter’s support page said the matter was fixed.
“Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!” Twitter Support tweeted.
On Monday afternoon, the Facebook status page came back online with a message for users. “Major disruptions: Platform Status,” it read. “We are aware that there is an ongoing issue impacting our service. Our engineers are working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers last Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, that found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Blumenthal said in his opening remarks last week.
Facebook defended itself against the bipartisan scrutiny at the hearing.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
The new, upcoming committee hearing, titled “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
(NEW YORK) — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back.
The apps, owned by Facebook, stopped working Monday for millions of users across the U.S., according to outage site Down Detector.
Both the mobile and web browser editions of the apps were not working as of 11:42 a.m. ET, the site reported.
They were down for more than six hours.
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us,” Facebook said Monday evening, once the apps began working again.
On Monday afternoon, a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The company added that it was experiencing “networking issues” and gave no timeline for a fix.
“Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now,” Facebook said at the time. “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible”
The Instagram and Facebook outages come shortly after a whistleblower came forward and claimed to CBS News that the company could do more to protect against hate speech and misinformation but prioritizes profits over its users.
Following the Sunday “60 Minutes” interview with the whistleblower, identified as Frances Haugen, a data scientist, the company put out a statement defending itself.
“We’ve invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority,” the company said in a statement. “If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”
After the whistleblower’s identity was made public, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., announced the Senate will hold a hearing in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee Tuesday to hear from Haugen about Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users.
Facebook’s stock took a severe hit Monday following the whistleblower’s revelations and the outage, recording its worst day of the year. At closing, the stock was trading at $326.23 a share, down 16.78 points or 4.89%.
The situation promoted other social media sites to make some fun jokes.
Twitter’s official account tweeted, “Hello literally everyone,” Monday afternoon.
The tweet prompted several funny replies from other major accounts, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks, which tweeted, “Perfect time for a coffee break.”
Twitter users later on Monday reported some issues with the app due to an increase in users, but Twitter’s support page said the matter was fixed.
“Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!” Twitter Support tweeted.
On Monday afternoon, the Facebook status page came back online with a message for users. “Major disruptions: Platform Status,” it read. “We are aware that there is an ongoing issue impacting our service. Our engineers are working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers last Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, which found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Blumenthal said in his opening remarks last week.
Facebook defended itself against the bipartisan scrutiny at the hearing.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
The new, upcoming committee hearing, titled “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
ABC News’ Victor Ordonez contributed to this report
(NEW YORK) — Starting Tuesday, PC owners who run Windows 10 will be eligible to download Windows 11 for free. But the ability to use Microsoft’s latest operating system will largely depend on your computer’s age, and what type of processor it uses.
When Microsoft first showed off Windows 11 over the summer, it also announced some restrictions on what types of PCs can run the new operating system. The company says your PC will need a special processor known as a Trusted Platform Module, or “TPM,” chip to run the new operating system.
“It’s a little chip the size of your fingernail that lives on the motherboard, sometimes it’s on the CPU,” says Digital Trends Managing Editor Nick Mokey. “It’s there for security purposes, there’s a good reason Microsoft wants it.”
In a June 25th blog post, Microsoft’s Director of Enterprise and OS Security David Weston wrote that the purpose of the company’s TPM requirement is to “help protect encryption keys, user credentials, and other sensitive data behind a hardware barrier so that malware and attackers can’t access or tamper with that data.”
Windows 11 launches against the backdrop of a rise in ransomware attacks. Some of those attacks, such as the SolarWinds hack, specifically targeted Microsoft code.
Mokey says newer computers are more likely to include the TPM chip.
“The exception would be some people who built their own computers might not have the chip that you need. Also some gaming computers don’t come stock with them,” says Mokey. “But if you have something within – that you bought sort of out of the box within the last few years it’s quite likely you’ll be able to run Windows 11.”
To figure out if your computer can run Windows 11, Mokey recommends using Microsoft’s “PC Health Check” app.
“It takes a couple seconds to download, it’ll run on your PC, look at the specs and tell you with no ambiguity whether you can run Windows 11.”
Windows 11 brings a number of non-security related updates to PC users as well. Microsoft has moved the Start menu from the bottom left corner of the home screen to the bottom center (though the system also gives users the option to move it back to the traditional location). And Mokey says that’s only the start of the design updates to the new OS.
“It’s definitely a very different look than Windows 10,” says Mokey. “I think it’s a cleaner look. Microsoft has implemented these, sort of, rounded, glassy-looking menus. Some of the animations are more fluid.”
He adds Windows 11 makes some under-the-hood changes as well.
“Microsoft has also promised some better performance. So that means both better battery life, better security… and there’s actually some perks for gamers in there as well, performance-wise,” says Mokey.
One of the buzzier features Microsoft is touting with Windows 11 is the ability to run Android apps on the desktop. That would allow users to download and run apps like TikTok through the Microsoft Store – just not right away.
“I think that was one of the features people were most excited about and Microsoft kind of threw a wet blanket on that,” says Mokey. “At launch that will not be available.”
Microsoft has not said when the feature will launch on Windows 11.
Hear ABC News Radio’s Cheri Preston report on Windows 11:
(NEW YORK) — Freeform and ice cream shop Carvel conjured up a sweet collaboration to celebrate the 31 Nights of Halloween.
Carvel added three limited-edition shakes, each one inspired by the Sanderson Sisters of Disney’s hit holiday movie “Hocus Pocus,” to get in the spirit for the network’s highly anticipated month-long movie lineup.
Sarah’s Chilling Churro Shake is a blend of crunchy churro pieces and cinnamon-sugar churro ice cream that’s topped with whipped cream and yellow sprinkles.
Winnie’s Glorious Cake Batter Shake is cake batter ice cream that’s blended then topped with whipped cream and orange sprinkles.
Mary’s Divine Cookies and Cream Shake combines classic vanilla soft serve with cookies and cream pieces that’s topped with violet sprinkles.
“Much like enjoying a Carvel ice cream treat, watching Freeform’s ‘31 Nights of Halloween’ and Disney’s ‘Hocus Pocus’ delivers a true sense of nostalgia and traditions,” Delia Wong, Carvel’s director of marketing, said in a statement. “With these shakes inspired by everyone’s favorite witchy sisters, Halloween and ice cream fans alike will have plenty of opportunities to soak up spooky season memories and create new ones.”
The custom treats are served in limited-edition cups with corresponding spoons for $4.79 available through Oct. 31.
This marks Carvel’s third year of partnership with Freeform. New to the festive collab is Ryan Porter’s Candier, which crafted a “Mostly Dead on the Inside” fall-scented candle line to light up the “31 Nights of Halloween.”
