Tech Roundup: Google Android 12, Microsoft Windows 11 & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Twitter takes the wraps off Twitter for Professionals, allowing businesses and creators to be able to opt into "professional accounts" that offer additional tools to distinguish their profile, quickly promote content through ads and capitalize on Twitter’s future e-commerce efforts; to shut down Scroll in about 30 days and fold the ad-free subscription web service into its Twitter Blue subscription as Ad-Free Articles.
• Facebook reveals that "configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers," and that a routine maintenance command "issued with the intention to assess the availability of global backbone capacity […] unintentionally took down all the connections in our backbone network, effectively disconnecting Facebook data centers globally," causing a global outage across its platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, for nearly six hours on October 4. (Telegram, which recently surpassed 500M monthly active users, says it added 70 millions users in the wake of the blackout.)
• Microsoft rolls out Windows 11 to the public with a modern user interface, native Teams integration, improved security features, and a host of "new tools, sounds and apps" as a free upgrade for Windows 10 users.
• Google's parent Alphabet gives away 200 patents related to stratospheric communications, service, operations and aircraft to Softbank as part of the latter's efforts to develop its own High Altitude Platform Stations (HAPS) business, months after the internet giant shut down its Loon internet balloon moonshot in January 2021.
• Google officially releases Android 12 with Material You redesign and a new privacy dashboard; brings background listening to YouTube Music users in Canada at no extra cost starting November 3 and debuts new "Continue watching" feature that makes it easy to quickly switch from smartphone to desktop when watching a video.

• Online dating platform Tinder to begin testing in-app "coins," obtained by remaining active and other activities such as keeping profiles up to date, which can be used to buy perks to boost matches, starting in Australia.
• On-demand streaming service Netflix officially brings its shuffle "Play Something" feature to Android mobile users, with plans to test the function on iOS in the coming months.
• Apple starts letting users report suspicious apps from their App Store listings through a new "Report a Problem" button; faces severe flak for a botched Safari web browser redesign that "shows a complete disregard for the familiarity users have with Safari's existing tab design."
• Retail giant Amazon to allow Prime subscribers to send gifts using only a phone number or an email address, without having to enter the recipient's mailing address, in the continental U.S.; reportedly has been working on a smart fridge for at least a couple of years that can monitor usage and suggest products and recipes.
• Payment processor Visa plans to trim the fee banks pay Apple when their cardholders use Apple Pay for recurring automated payments such as gym memberships and streaming services likely starting next year amid discontent in the banking industry following the tech giant's launch of its own credit card in 2019.
• Mozilla updates its privacy-centric mobile browser Firefox Focus with a new look, shortcuts and more privacy controls; raises concerns with Google's proposed plans to limit browser fingerprinting using a mechanism called Privacy Budget, stating that it could lead to disruptive site breakage and used for tracking by exhausting the budget, adding the "best approach is to minimise the easy-to-access fingerprinting surface by limiting the amount of information exposed by new APIs."
• Facebook's Instagram ditches the IGTV brand and combines IGTV's long-form videos and Instagram Feed videos into a new Instagram Video format.