Sonos today announced that Google Assistant will not be available on its products until at least 2019. The service was supposed to launch in 2018 but the company said in a blog posting it needs a bit more time. Additional information about timing will be released in early 2019, Sonos says.

Eager customers can sign up for a private beta as long as they agree to use the service extensively and respond to surveys within a few days.

Sonos products already have access to Amazon Alexa. Given Sonos’s longstanding notion of supporting all platforms, it makes sense that the company would want customers to have access to both Alexa and Google Assistant. That’s what makes Sonos compelling: They provide the hardware, and owners use whichever software platform they want.

This is clearly critical for Sonos. For a long time, Sonos provided the best-sounding smart speaker system on the market, but Amazon, Google and traditional speaker brands are quickly introducing speakers that provide similar sound quality. To keep up and justify the higher price of its hardware, Sonos needs to offer owners the best sound and the best software, and offering Google Assistant on its products is a key part of that goal.

The tvOS 12.1.1 public beta can be obtained by going to the Settings app on the Apple TV and navigating to the Software Updates section under “System.” “Get Public Beta Updates” will need to be toggled on, and once it is, the Apple TV will download the beta software.

What’s new in tvOS 12.1.1 is a mystery because Apple does not provide detailed release information for tvOS updates. The new software most likely focuses on bugs that were not able to be addressed in the tvOS 12.1 update.

Nothing new was discovered in the tvOS 12.1.1 beta provided to developers, which is not a surprise as Apple’s tvOS updates have historically been minor in scale.

Google employees are fed up with the search giant’s lack of transparency when it comes to handling sexual harassment and misconduct allegations.

This morning, thousands of Googlers from San Francisco to Dublin are walking out in hopes of bringing real change to the company. The protest follows a New York Times report last week that revealed Google had provided Android co-creator Andy Rubin a $90 million payout package despite credible allegations of sexual misconduct made against him.

The protestors have five key asks:

1. An end to forced arbitration in cases of harassment and discrimination.
2. A commitment to end pay and opportunity inequity.
3. A publicly disclosed sexual harassment transparency report.
4. A clear, uniform, globally inclusive process for reporting sexual misconduct safely and anonymously.
5. Elevate the chief diversity officer to answer directly to the chief executive officer and make recommendations directly to the board of directors. And appoint an employee representative to the board.

Plans of the walkout emerged earlier this week, just days after the bombshell NYT report was released. According to BuzzFeed, some 200 Googlers began staging the protest; the group quickly grew to thousands, including non-U.S. Googlers. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had reportedly condoned the protest in an internal e-mail to employees Tuesday.

“Earlier this week, we let Googlers know that we are aware of the activities planned for today and that employees will have the support they need if they wish to participate,” Pichai said in a statement provided to TechCrunch today. “Employees have raised constructive ideas for how we can improve our policies and our processes going forward. We are taking in all their feedback so we can turn these ideas into action.”

Pichai also responded to the NYT report with a letter co-signed by vice president of people operations Eileen Naughton, admitting that 48 people had been terminated at the company for sexual harassment in the past two years alone, including 13 senior employees.

We’ll be at the San Francisco protest, which begins at 11:10 a.m. PST. Here’s a look at protestors around the globe this morning.

Last year, Defakto released the limited edition Stille Nacht (Silent Night) in collaboration with artist Friederike Bellman. The watch featured a hand-painted star field throughout the dial. Now, the independent German watchmaker is back with the successor to the original: the Mitternacht (or in English, the Midnight). It’s even better than the original.

Like the original, each timepiece features a star field airbrushed by hand, making each watch unique. But this time, the dial is even darker, allowing the stars, painted in Superluminova, to shine even brighter. The new version’s hands are now also coated in lume to make it easier to read in the dark of midnight.

The watch features a 40mm face, a sapphire crystal and a Swiss-made Ronda 712 Quartz movement. It retails for around $400 US after conversion from EUR, without import duties.

As detailed in John’s excellent piece on the modern state of timepieces, traditional watches have survived the smartwatch onslaught and some brands are seeing sales increase. Defakto is among the growing number of independent watch makers emerging without the massive might behind the biggest names in watches. While technology has paved the way for a smartwatch, it has also allowed independent companies to access parts and services traditionally guarded by legacy watchmakers.