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Purism, the company behind the Librem laptops and phone powered by a Linux-based operating system, announced today a privacy-focused suite of applications for Android, iOS, and Linux platforms.

Tired of the privacy issues with the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, Purism decided to launch a suite of apps that truly respects user's privacy, doesn't track users' activity, do not show ads, nor analyze or sell your data. The Librem One suite aims to offers alternatives to your most used apps on iOS and Android.

Librem One currently consists of an end-to-end encrypted chat app, end-to-end encrypted email client, end-to-end encrypted VPN solution, as well as a social network platform for everyone. In the near future, the Librem One suite will also include end-to-end encrypted cloud storage, payments, and phone service for the upcoming Librem 5 Linux phone by Purism.

"With all the recent news surrounding the privacy problems of Google, Apple, Facebook, and others, Librem One is coming onto the scene at the right time for the right reasons. While attempting to pivotto caring about privacy, Facebook has consistently provenincapable of respecting people," said Purism. "Google has also had its fair shareof privacy invading issues."
"Librem One is now available for Android and iOS, coming soon to PureOS"

Starting today, users can access the Librem One software bundle that includes Librem Chat offering end-to-end encrypted chat, VoIP, and video calling features, Librem Mail offering an end-to-end encrypted email solution, Librem Tunnel offering an end-to-end encrypted VPN tunnel solution, as well as Librem Social, a public social media platform with millions of active users.

Microsoft is now getting ready for another important milestone concerning users running earlier versions of Windows.

The company will retire its MSN apps for Windows 8.1 as soon as the next month, with warnings now displayed to users who still run them.

MSN News and Weather will thus go dark on June 3, and the download links will be removed, which means you can no longer install them on new devices after this date. The app will also stop working on devices where they are already installed at some point in the near future.

As German site DrWindows noted, Microsoft is also getting ready to kick the Microsoft Store for Windows 8.0 offline this summer.

Needless to say, users are recommended to switch to Windows 10 where all the apps are still supported and continue running fine. On Windows 10, the MSN News app has been replaced with Microsoft News, a completely overhaul application, while the Weather app provides nearly the same functionality with support for live tiles and more.
"No app updates for Windows 8"

The next major milestone for Windows 8.1 apps, at least according to Microsoft, takes place in July 2023.

“July 1st, 2023 – Microsoft will stop distributing app updates to Windows 8.1 devices. You’ll still be able to publish updates to all apps (including those with Windows 8.1 packages). However, these updates will only be made available to Windows 10 devices,” Microsoft notes in an announcement.

The July 1, 2019 deadline, on the other hand, only concerns Windows Phone 8.x and Windows 8, albeit according to today’s report, MSN apps for Windows 8.1 would be retired as well a month earlier.

According to Microsoft’s original schedule, the company will stop distributing app updates to Windows Phone 8.x and Windows 8 devices beginning with July this year. All updates will make their way to Windows 10 just fine.